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Mortgage Applications Increase as Rates Drop

Monday, March 11th, 2013

Mortgage applications increased 14.8 percent for the week ending March 1, 2013 from a week earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) weekly survey.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 14.8 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the index increased 15 percent from the previous week and was at its highest level since mid-January.

The refinance share of mortgage More...

Housing Starts in December Jump to Four-Year High

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Home builders in the U.S. broke ground on more homes than forecast in December, capping the best year for the industry since 2008, which is another good sign that the economy is rebounding.

Housing starts climbed 12.1 percent in December to a 954,000 annual rate, exceeding forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists and the most since June 2008, according to the Commerce Department. For the whole of 2012, construction started on a total of 780,000 new homes, up from 608,800 in More...

Freddie Mac Releases Economic And Housing Market Outlook

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Freddie Mac recently released its U.S. Economic and Housing Market outlook for January, showing that despite the fiscal uncertainties facing the country, consumer confidence has remained fairly resilient in recovering from the recession’s lows, buoyed by improving labor and housing market news.

Some highlights: December registered 155,000 job gains and November’s payrolls were revised up 24,000, bringing the employment increase for 2012 to 1.86 million, the best since More...

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Help More than 2.5 Million with Foreclosure Actions

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed more than 134,000 foreclosure prevention actions in the third quarter of 2012, bringing the total foreclosure prevention actions to more than 2.5 million since the start of conservatorship in 2008 with nearly 1.3 million of those actions being permanent loan modifications.

These actions, which have helped more than 2.1 borrowers stay in their homes, are detailed in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s third quarter 2012 Foreclosure Prevention More...

Investors Give Housing Market a Boost

Friday, December 14th, 2012

The housing market continues to recover with home prices rising and pending sales and construction on the upswing. The number of inventory homes is dropping as well, but will it last?

If the upswing continues, it will most likely be investors rather than consumers who will sustain the momentum, according to a recent web post by CBS News.

According to the recent Fiserv Case-Shiller data, the real estate market during the spring and summer this year was the strongest since the More...

NAR Says Sandy Superstorm to Slow Home Sales for Balance of 2012

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says that existing-home sales, a market indicator followed by economists and analysts, probably will slow in the northeast U.S. for the balance of 2012 as the Sandy superstorm disrupts deals.

A spokesman for the NAR said that closings may be delayed, and most closings occur at the end of each month. Some multiple listing services that supply data to the NAR may be incapacitated, while sales elsewhere won’t be completed because of bank and More...

Listings Decline as Housing Market Recovers

Friday, October 19th, 2012

The number of homes listed for sale in the United States fell 18 percent in September from a year earlier, and the time that homes stayed on the market dropped 11 percent as the housing market continues to recover.

According to Realtor.com data, there were 1.8 million homes for sale in September, down from 2.2 million a year earlier and more than 40 percent below the September 2007 peak of 3.1 million, according to the NAR website. Properties on the market last month had been listed More...

Home Prices Increase Again in July 2012

Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Average home prices increased by 1.5 percent for a 10-city composite and by 1.6 percent for a 20-city composite in July versus June 2012, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

For the third consecutive month, all 20 cities and both composites recorded positive monthly changes. It would have been a fourth had prices not fallen by 0.6 percent in Detroit back in April.

A total of 16 of the 20 cities and both composites rose over More...

Real Estate Prices are Rising

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

Homes prices appear to be rising again after falling for more than five years, according to Bloomberg.com/news. All the major sales price indexes show that there have been modest national increases in recent months, even after adjusting for seasonal patterns.
When foreclosures and distressed sales are excluded from the data, prices are up even more. The asking-price index, a leading indicator of sales prices published by Trulia Inc., climbed at More...

International Real Estate Sales Continue to Climb in the U.S.

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Due to low prices and the relative weakness of the dollar, international buyers continue to identify the U.S. as a desirable place to own property and make a profitable investment.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2012 Profile of the International Home Buying Activity survey, total residential international sales in the U.S. for the past year ending March 2012 equaled $82.5 billion, up from $66.4 billion in 2011. Total international sales were evenly split More...