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U.S. Negative Equity Rate Dips Below 20 Percent in Q4 | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Today, Zillow released the fourth quarter Negative Equity Report. Nationally, the share of homeowners with a mortgage that are underwater, owing more on their home than their home is worth, has dropped below 20 percent for the first time in years.
As home values have continued to rise over the past year, millions of underwater homeowners have come up for air and are finally able to put their home on the market. This increase in inventory should, in turn, help create a more balanced home shopping season than we’ve seen in the past few years, with buyers having more choice and perhaps less competition.
According to the most recent numbers, nearly 10 million people were underwater on their mortgage in the fourth quarter 2013, collectively owing $657 billion more than their homes are worth. But the number of underwater homeowners is slowly but surely receding. Almost 3.9 million U.S. homeowners were freed in 2013, and the negative equity rate fell to 19.4 percent at the end of the fourth quarter, from 27.5 percent at the same time in 2012.
Nationwide, the negative equity rate is expected to fall to 17.2 percent by the end of 2014, signaling further stabilization of the market and likely freeing up even more inventory.
http://homes.yahoo.com/news/u-negative-equity-rate-dips-below-20-percent-050552127.html
5 Cities Most Likely to Serve Up a Soul Mate | Bedford Hills Real Estate
If true love hasn’t found you this Valentines Day, here’s a look at five cities you can move to if you want to boost your odds of meeting the perfect mate.
“We feel that these are the places you should go to if you want to find love,” says economist Krishna Rao of real-estate site Zillow.com, which this week released its Valentines Day Index of America’s most singles-friendly locales.
The firm analyzed America’s 50 largest metro areas for three criteria key to finding your soul mate:
- what percent of the local population is single;
- how many restaurants and other date-friendly sites a place has per capita;
- how much disposable income the typical single has — an important consideration if you expect your date to at least sometimes pick up the check.
Rao says singles-friendly cities are actually harder than you’d think to find, as unmarried people make up just 50.8% of America’s total 15-and-older population.
Zillow also estimates that the typical single has just $1,301 a month of gross income left after paying rent — not always enough to pay for dates considering that also has to cover taxes, car payments and other expenses.
Lastly, Rao says the average U.S. community has just 15.9 restaurants, bars, museums and other date-suitable establishments for every 10,000 residents, meaning there aren’t always lots of interesting places to go.
Bet you can’t guess which presidential street name has the highest home values | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
The best and worst housing markets in America right now | Bedford Hills Homes
Valuation services provider Pro Teck releases a monthly home value forecast listing the top 10 real estate markets, ranked by the impact of foreclosure sales on localized housing recovery.
It’s somewhat of a different approach, to hinge a data call on distressed properties, but nonetheless exceedingly fascinating.
Right now, in America, according to Pro Teck, Long Island, New York, leads the rankings of hottest real estate markets.
“Many factors account for Long Island’s strong market, including foreclosures making up an inconsequential 2.18% of sales and available housing inventory at only 3.63 months,” said Tom O’Grady, CEO of Pro Teck. “Looking at the extended forecast, we see Long Island reaching peak highs again within five years.”
The following top ten lists highlight the best and worst metros in January with regard to a number of leading real estate market indicators, including: sales/listing activity and prices, months of remaining inventory, days on market, sold-to-list price ratio and foreclosure and REO activity, according to Pro Teck.
January’s top ten:
Nassau County-Suffolk County, N.Y.
Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, Calif.
Ann Arbor, Mich.
Anaheim-Santa Ana-Irvine, Calif.
Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, Calif.
San Diego-Carlsbad, Calif.
San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles-Arroyo Grande, Calif.
Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, Calif.
Ashville, N.C.
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, Texas
Pending home sales mirror pre-crash levels | Bedford Hills Homes
Pending home sales fell steadily from May to December last year, closely mirroring the trajectory of the same economic indicator months before the 2007 home price crash, analysts Chris Flanagan and Justin Borst with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch claim in a new report.
But don’t get sour on housing just yet, or assume we are in store for another home price crash.
While pending home sales fell sharply in December ??— and experienced steady declines last year — other factors, not existent in 2007, are likely to save housing from a free-fall in prices, the two researchers say.
But before analyzing the year 2014, we have to look back to 2007 when a quiet housing storm was silently brewing in America.
Fortunately, unlike 2007, current housing prices are closer to fair market values and inventory levels remain constrained. Buffered by these two factors, a wide swing in prices is unlikely, the researchers said. On the other hand, the perfect storm of 2007 had additional headwinds in the form of excess inventory and steep price drops from peak levels.
Yes, it’s true year-over-year growth has likely reached its peak and growth will be slower in the future, but Borst and Flanagan are still calling for 5% home price growth in 2014.
In fact, prices are unlikely to move dramatically, they say, since mortgage credit is still wound tight and builders are not creating excess housing supply.
http://www.housingwire.com/articles/28813-pending-home-sales-data-mirrors-pre-crash-levels
Friday is last day to sign up for early ‘.realtor’ domain notifications | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Members of the National Association of Realtors have until Friday at midnight to sign up for “priority registration” of their own “.realtor” domain name.
NAR will provide a free “.realtor” top-level domain for one year to the first 500,000 members who apply for a .realtor domain that incorporates their name. Members who file a “priority registration” request by Jan. 31 will receive an advance email notification that will provide information on how they can claim their .realtor domain with their name, one day prior to the domain’s general availability.
No specific date has been set for the general release. NAR says it will be “sometime this year.”
Only NAR members (agents and brokers), local and state Realtor associations, association multiple listing services, affiliated institutes, societies and councils, and other NAR-approved licensees will be able to register for the .realtor domain.
Source: RealtorMag
– See more at: http://www.inman.com/wire/friday-is-last-day-to-sign-up-for-early-realtor-domain-notifications/?utm_source=20140131&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyheadlinesam#sthash.PAlD59L8.dpuf
The “Vanishing” First-Time Home Buyer; What It Means for the Housing Market | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Ah, the U.S. housing market, the so-called silver lining in the U.S. recovery—but not for long, as it may be rusting. The U.S. housing numbers are in, and they aren’t spectacular.
In the U.S. housing market, December existing-home sales rose one percent month-over-month at an annualized pace of 4.87 million units. Analysts were expecting December existing-home numbers to come in at 4.93 million. The one-percent increase also has to be taken with a grain of salt, as it was helped, in part, by a downward revision in November existing-home U.S. housing market sales to 4.82 million units. (Source: “December Existing-Home Sales Rise, 2013 Strongest in Seven Years,” National Association of Realtors web site, January 23, 2014.)
The December existing-home U.S. housing market sales of 4.87 million are also 0.6% below the 4.9-million-unit level recorded in December 2012. And sales of existing homes were down 27.9% at an annualized rate for the entire fourth quarter.
First-time home buyers—the fuel of the U.S. housing market—accounted for just 27% of all purchases in December, down from 28% in November and October and 30% in December 2012. That’s a huge drop over the 30-year average of 40% and a number real estate professionals and economists consider ideal. It is also the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2008.
First-time home buyers, who tend to purchase lower-priced homes, are being pushed out of the U.S. housing market recovery by all-cash sales. All-cash sales accounted for a whopping 42.1% of all U.S. residential sales in December, up from 38.1% in November and 18.0% in December 2012. (Source: “Short Sales and Foreclosure Sales Combined Accounted for 16 percent of U.S. Residential Sales in 2013,” RealtyTrac web site, January 22, 2014.)
Chinese Homebuyers Thronging Sydney Make Mini-Bubble Frenzy | Bedford Hills Real Estate
Tina Ford, an Australian public servant, said she could hardly believe it when her three-bedroom apartment sold this month for A$1 million ($877,000) at an auction in which all 16 registered bidders were ethnic Chinese.
“I’m over the moon, I’m gobsmacked,” said Ford, 53, adding that she “would have been ecstatic with A$940,000” and didn’t expect to double what she had paid 14 years ago for her third-floor unit with a balcony 11 kilometers (7 miles) from downtown Sydney in the suburb of Chatswood. “I suspect that overseas investment, Chinese or otherwise, is certainly pushing prices up, but from a vendor’s perspective, I’m ecstatic.”
Such buying by locally resident Chinese and those from mainland China is inflating housing bubbles in and around Sydney, where prices in some suburbs have surged as much as 27 percent in the past year. That’s almost three times faster than the overall market.
Many of the neighborhoods with the biggest price gains “are areas that are popular with Chinese buyers,” said Andrew Wilson, senior economist at real estate data firm Australian Property Monitors. “Some of these suburbs are seeing price growth that we haven’t seen in Sydney since the early 2000s.”
The proportion of foreigners purchasing new homes in Australia more than doubled to 12.5 percent in the three months to September, from 5 percent throughout most of 2011, according to a survey of more than 300 property professionals by National Australia Bank Ltd.
Home prices increase 13.7 percent from 2012 | Bedford Hills NY Real Estate
Home prices extended a winning streak in November, with 2013 shaping up as the best year for gains since 2005, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller indexes.
The composite 20-city home price index, a key gauge of U.S. home prices, was up 13.7 percent in November from a year earlier. All 20 cities have posted year-over-year gains for 11 straight months.
Prices in the 20-city index were 0.1 percent lower than the prior month, but that’s mostly due to the weaker winter selling season. Adjusted for seasonal variations, prices were 0.9 percent higher month-over-month. Nine of the 20 cities posted a monthly declines, though on a seasonally adjusted basis priced no city saw a drop.
Though home-price gains have been strong, the Case-Shiller data are lagged. Many expect increases to moderate this year.
“The rapid gains in house prices over the past year are the result of low inventories of homes for sale and strengthening home buying activity. But a slowdown in the pace of house price appreciation is in store for 2014,” said Paul Diggle at Capital Economics. “We are anticipating a meaningful increase in the supply of homes for sale. The survey evidence suggests that rising prices are motivating more owners to list their homes. And judging by the recovery in housing starts, the inventory of new homes for sale is also set to rise strongly.
http://realestate.msn.com/blogs/post–home-prices-increase-137-percent-from-2012