Category: US Housing
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Will Speculators Rescue the U.S. Housing Market? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Sy_Harding
After the housing bubble burst there was sympathy for first-time home-buyers who had been enticed in by the easy loans and rising home prices and wound up in trouble.
But investors in single family homes came to be castigated as ‘flippers’, ‘suckers’, and worse. They had played a significant role in creating the bubble, signing contracts, often on multiple homes, making virtually no down payments, not intending to ever live in or even rent out the homes, but to simply flip them for a quick profit. Builders could hardly keep up with demand for a while, but wound up with wastelands of partially completed developments and condo projects, especially in the sun-belt states.
Friday, August 03, 2012
U.S. Housing Market Good News Keeps Rolling In / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Fred_Sheehan
"Positive Housing News Keeps Rolling In," exclaimed the headline of a July 24, 2012, Wall Street Journal story by Steven Russolillo. The author found much to praise. One gloomy Gus could not help but conclude otherwise. Old Gus holds the house market at bay, one reason being the great unknown of what will happen to house prices when Fannie and Freddie are no more. The GSEs (Government Sponsored Enterprises) are still a massive presence in the home mortgage market. Their full faith is due to the implicit U.S. government guarantee.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Fall in New Home Sales Casts a Shadow on U.S. Housing Market / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
Sales of new single-family homes fell 8.4% to an annual rate of 350,000 in June following upward revisions to both April and May sales numbers. The level of new home sales in the second quarter (363,000) is above the first quarter mark (352,000) mainly due to the sharp increase in sales recorded in May.
Friday, July 13, 2012
U.S. Housing Market: Share of Underwater Homes Trending Down / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The recovery of the housing market is another major concern of the Fed in addition to the labor market. Three years of economic recovery is yet to result in a meaningful turnaround of the housing sector. One of the pressing issues is the prevalence of home mortgages with negative equity. Negative equity (often referred to as homes with underwater mortgages) means that homes are worth less than what borrowers owe on their mortgages.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Case-Shiller U.S. Home Price Index – Confirms Improvements Reported Elsewhere / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller Home Price Index increased 0.67% in April, marking the third consecutive monthly increase. This is the first sustained gain since the recovery began three years ago, excluding the gains seen when the temporary first-time home buyer credit program was in place during an extended part of 2009 and 2010. Among the twenty metro areas tracked, seventeen of them showed an increase in the home price index, while home price gauges of Boston, Detroit, and New York slipped.
Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
U.S. New Home Sales Encouraging Signs / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
Sales of new single-family homes rose 7.6% to an annual rate of 369,000 units, after a nearly steady reading in April. Regionally, sales of new homes fell in the Midwest (-10.6%) and West (-3.5%), while they moved up in the Northeast (+36.7%) and South (+12.7%).
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Key Reasons Why U.S. Housing Market is Not Coming Back: Demographics, Student Debt, No Jobs / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Mike_Shedlock
Consumers Not Ready to Borrow Again
Ben Bernanke is trying like mad to stimulate credit and lending but to no avail. It's an uphill debt because of demographics, student debt, and lack of jobs.
Citing falling debt-service needs, some economists think consumers may be ready to go on a borrowing. They are badly mistaken.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, June 22, 2012
U.S. Existing Homes Sales Slip, But Prices Show an Improvement / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
Sales of all existing homes fell 1.5% to an annual rate of 4.55 million units in May following an increase in April. Purchases of single-family existing homes declined 1.0% to an annual rate of 4.05 million. Sales of existing homes rose 1.0% in Midwest but dropped in the Northeast (-4.8%), South (-0.6%), and West (-3.4%) during May. The sales mark of existing homes has risen nearly 21% from the low in November 2008 but it has been a long four-year journey. The swings in home sales when the first-time home buyer credit program was in place are excluded from consideration.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
U.S. House Price Index Maintains a Slow Improvement Trend / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Case-Shiller home price index rose 0.1% in March, after a 0.2% gain in the prior month. The back-to-back monthly increase is noteworthy because one gains of this sort were seen several ago, excluding the period when the first-time home buyer program was in place. On a year-to-year basis, the quarterly Case-Shiller home price index posted a 1.9% decline in first quarter (see Chart 3). The Corelogic Home Price Index shows a nearly similar improvement in the first quarter (-1.7%, see Chart 3).
Read full article... Read full article...
Sunday, May 27, 2012
"Crash is Over", U.S. Housing Market has Bottom Declared / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: EWI
"The crash is over", says an economist. "Housing can only go up," says another. "I think the market has bottomed out," says one builder. "It appears we have turned the proverbial corner," says a second.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
U.S. Housing Market Bulls vs Bears Showdown / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Bloomberg
**HOUSING SHOWDOWN: Housing bear Gary Shilling and housing bull Mark Kiesel of PIMCO debated the state of the U.S. housing market on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart" with Trish Regan and Adam Johnson.
Shilling said that housing prices will decline 20% this year because "there are 2 million inventories, both visible and shadow inventories, over and above normal working levels", which is "a tremendous overhang." He went on to say that "excess inventories are the mortal enemy of prices."
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
U.S. Housing Market Is Stabilizing / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
Sales of existing homes rose 4.6% in April to annualized rate of 3.4 million units, following decline in February and March. Purchases of single-family existing homes rose 3.0% to an annual rate of 4.09 million units. The April sales tally of existing homes is the best in the entire recovery excluding the spikes recorded when the first-time home buyer credit program was underway and sales readings of January 2012. On a 3-month moving average basis, sales of existing single-family homes have been essentially flat.
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Getting Ahead of the Competition or Is U.S. Commercial Real Estate Market about to Crash? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Ron_Jaenisch
Trading is a craft. It is part art and part science. in order to succeed in trading one needs to recognize what is probable to occur in the future and be ahead of others in related fields.
An excellent example for this focus is the Chart of CBG. This is an excellent international firm profiting from commercial real estate turnover and value growth, as a result of thier activities. Their future is tied to the profitability of Commercial Real Estate, as well as being ahead of their competitor Advanced Market Consulting who has an excellent reputation with a lower cost structure.
Read full article... Read full article...
Friday, April 27, 2012
Another U.S. Housing Market Indicator Pointing to a Turnaround / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) of the National Association of Realtors increased 4.1% to 101.4 in March, the highest since April 2010. The PHSI reflects contracts not actual closings of sales of existing homes and typically lead actual sales by 1-2 months.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Is This the U.S. Housing Market Bottom? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Don Miller writes:
Analysts, government officials and certainly homebuyers are spending hours trying to figure out if we have reached the housing market bottom.
Yesterday's (Tuesday's) data would seem to suggest the bottom is a bit bumpier than most people think.
According to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 cities, home prices declined 3.5% from a year ago, while the 10-city composite slipped 3.6%. That meant fresh new post-bubble lows for home prices.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Improving U.S. Housing Market? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
Sales of new homes fell 7.1% in March to an annual rate of 328,000, hold your breath and don’t be disappointed. The level of sales would have been much lower if the sales of new homes of February had not been revised to an annual rate of 353,000 from the earlier estimate of 313,000 and January’s sales was 318,000 and not 329,000 as the report shows today. Essentially, there were upward revisions of new home sales from December (small upward revision) through February, which has changed the recent trend of new home sales. The 6-month moving average of new home sales has risen to 331,000 in March, up 13.7% from a low of 291,000 in October of 2010 (see Chart 1). So, the good news is there is a small pickup in sales of new homes.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
U.S. Housing Market Sector – Why the Fed Depicts it as "Depressed" / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The National Association of Realtors published existing home sales data for March; it was down. But, the strength of January home sales gave a lift to the quarterly read. Housing starts data for March show a drop in new homebuilding activity but the first quarter average shows a gain of 10.5%. New home sales numbers will be published on April 24. Sales of new homes fell in January and February, a sharp increase in March sales will be necessary to give a boost to the quarterly average. These numbers need to be viewed in a historical context to evaluate the current status of the housing sector.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Outlook for the Busted U.S. Housing Market, Cheapest Prices in 40 Years / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: LewRockwell
Addison Wiggin. writes: A little more than a year ago, a very successful professional investor declared, “If you don’t own a home, buy one. If you own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes, buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home.”
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
Where Would Warren Buffett Invest Today? / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Money_Morning
Jason Simpkins writes:
If Warren Buffett was going to invest in anything right now, where would he put his money?
At first, that question may be difficult to answer. But if you think about Buffett's classic investment approach - focusing on real assets with a reliable return and prizing valuation - it gets a little easier.
Read full article... Read full article...
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
U.S. House Prices Index Maintains Downward Trend / Housing-Market / US Housing
By: Asha_Bangalore
The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller Home Price Index held steady in January. Among the 20 metro areas that the index tracks, eight metros reported increases in prices (Seattle, Tampa, Miami, Washington, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver) during January, while it was unchanged in Boston and Las Vegas, and fell in the remaining metros.
Read full article... Read full article...