| North Salem NY Real Estate Report | RobReportBlog | |
| 2013 | 6 months ending 8/7 | 2012 |
| 29 | Sales | 26 |
| $548,000.00 | median sold price | $477,500.00 |
| $200,000.00 | low sold price | $215,000.00 |
| $8,900,000.00 | high sold price | $2,600,000.00 |
| 2946 | average size | 2667 |
| $258.00 | ave. price per foot | $239.00 |
| 206 | ave days on market | 226 |
| $889,137.00 | average sold price | $656,150.00 |
| 95.31% | ave sold to ask | 93.09% |
Despite news that the 30-year fixed rate has surpassed the 4% mark, economists continue to be cautiously optimistic about the housing market.
“Increases in rates would not be occurring if there wasn’t economic growth,” Steve Blitz chief economist at ITG Investment Research told Forbes last month. “If people thought the economy was heading south, even with absence of quantitative easing, the rates wouldn’t rise.”
Over the past few months the 30-year fixed rate, which has been hovering well below 4% has been trending upward, creating concern that recovery has halted.
Before the rate increase, April home prices rose 12% over a year ago with signed contracts in May at the highest level since 2006. However, by June existing home sales dropped 1.2% as rates started to rise. As of the end of July, the 30-year fixed rate stood at 4.31%, which is a drop from 4.37%.
Market specialists expressed concern that after months of recovery, that rising rates might hamper growth and overall recovery. However Blitz says that the housing market rebound is more of a symptom of recovery and not indicative of its overall direction. “There may be pent up demand, but there’s no pent up wealth to go buy a house. Housing will not lead the economy as it did from 2004-2006,” Blitz adds. “Instead, it will grow with the economy and not lead it.”
According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), existing homes sales stand at its highest level since November 2009. In fact NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun refers to growth as “overwhelmingly positive.”
Mike Corn, CEO and co-founder of CU Realty Services says that data released by the U.S. HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau show an increase in builder confidence and that CoreLogic expects home prices to continue to rise.
Although rates and prices have inched up, Corn says that he believes the market will continue to improve and that this trend may drive more consumers to consider a credit union mortgage loan. “As more sellers list their homes to take advantage of improving market values, many will become buyers in need of a mortgage,” he says in a statement. “And with loan rates slowly creeping up, many home buyers are looking to purchase sooner rather than later. For credit unions with the right marketing strategy in place, there’s a great opportunity to provide homebuyers with the mortgages they need.”
Rising Rates Appear to Have Little Impact on Housing Recovery.
The first six months of 2013 brought a remarkably fast recovery to Sacramento’s real estate market.
Figures from DataQuick, a San Diego real estate information firm, show median single-familyhome prices jumping anywhere from 15 percent to 50 percent across much of the four-county Sacramento region.
“I don’t recall anyone predicting prices would rise this much” in so short a time, said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage.
There were a few exceptions, mainly in the region’s most sought-after residential areas. The college town of Davis, the leafy neighborhoods near downtown Sacramento, and the upscale foothill communities of Granite Bay and El Dorado Hills held their value better in the crash, LePage said. Those areas saw more moderateprice increases during this year’s rebound, he noted.
“The spectacular appreciation tends to be in areas where prices got beaten down the most during the downturn,” LePage said.
Parts of south Sacramento, West Sacramento,Tahoe Park, North Sacramento, North Highlands and Arden Arcade were among the places that saw the biggest leap in prices, with appreciation of about 50 percent over the same period of 2012, according to DataQuick.
The median price is the point at which half of homes sell for more and half sell for less.
Most of the rise in median home prices has been driven by an increase in values, as more buyers compete for a relatively small number of homes for sale, LePage said.
Investors paying cash and snapping up cut-priced homes for rentals spurred the upward price pressure, he said. The realization that the market had hit bottom and turned upward also unleashed a wave of pent-up demand from mid-level and high-end buyers, he added.
Combined with a record-low inventory of homes for sale and record low mortgage rates, it pushed prices skyward.
“In six months people went from thinking prices might fall to thinking they would go up,” LePage said.
Another big factor was a sharp drop in the number of foreclosed homes on the market. There was a huge decrease in foreclosure resales in the first six months of this year compared with the first six months of last year, LePage said.
In Sacramento County, for example, the number of homes on the market that were foreclosures dropped from 41 percent in the first half of 2012 to 16 percent in the first half of this year. El Dorado, Placer and Yolo counties also saw the percentage of foreclosures on the market drop by more than half.
Whether such huge price gains can continue is another question. Rising mortgage rates and rising prices could moderate demand, LePage said.
“It’s easy to imagine a temporary pause where people have to think more carefully because (those factors) are affecting affordability,” he said.
So far, it’s a lucky ’13 for rebounding home values – Real Estate – The Sacramento Bee.
Gulfport –
The average sales price of a home in South Mississippi in June reached its highest level in three years, a sign that the Coast real estate market is following the national trend upward.
According to the Mississippi Gulf Coast Multiple Listing Service, homes and condos sold on average for $134,721 in June. That was up $8,000 from May and almost $11,000 from a year ago. The last time
South Mississippi saw that price in July 2010.
Kathy Elias, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Alfonso Realty in Gulfport, tells The Sun Herald people who bought a condominium in South Mississippi for $650,000 after Hurricane Katrina can’t sell it today for $200,000, and only a few lenders will finance a condo purchase.
WJTV News Channel 12 – Real Estate Prices Rebounding On Miss. Coast.
The average sales price of a home in South Mississippi in June reached its highest level in three years, a sign that the Coast real estate market is following the national trend upward.
Homes and condos sold on average for $134,721 in June, according to the Mississippi Gulf Coast Multiple Listing Service. That was up $8,000 from May and almost $11,000 from a year ago. The last time
South Mississippi saw that price was in July 2010.
While that’s good news for some sellers, it doesn’t yet mean homeowners who owe more than their home is worth can move without bringing thousands of dollars to the closing table to satisfy the loan, said Kathy Elias, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Alfonso Realty in Gulfport.
She’s been a real estate agent for 18 years and said most everything has changed since the real estate bubble burst. Since 2008, it’s much harder for buyers to get a loan, harder for sellers to get their homes appraised for what they feel their property is worth and extremely tough to buy or sell a condo.
Elias said people who bought a condominium in South Mississippi for $650,000 after Hurricane Katrina can’t sell it today for $200,000, and only a few lenders will finance a condo purchase.
‘Steadily rebounding’
Ray Gonzales Jr., a real estate broker and consultant with Century 21 Williams & Associates in Gulfport, said the inventory of bank foreclosures and short sales has tumbled from 23 percent of all closed sales last year (July 2011 through June 2012) to 11 percent for the same period this year. The rate of homes closed is the best in six years.
Real estate prices rebound but it’s still a buyers’ market | Business | The Sun Herald.
House prices rose by 0.9% in July, a sixth successive monthly rise which brought the annual rate of growth to its highest level in three years, according to figures from lender Halifax.
The bank said demand for homes was being boosted by signs of improvement in the economy and government schemes to kick-start the market. Its report is in line with those from other players in the propertymarket, which have shown prices gathering momentum in the first half of 2013 and led several commentators to adjust their forecasts for the year upwards.
Halifax’s latest monthly snapshot of the housing market showed the average price of a UK home reached £169,624 during the month, and that prices were up by 4.6% year-on-year – the highest rate of increase since August 2010.
To work out the annual rate of house price inflation Halifax does not do a straight comparison of monthly figures, but compares the quarterly average of each year. When the monthly figures are compared the annual rate of growth is 5.7%
Three-month growth figures, which offer a better picture of the market than single monthly figures, showed a 2.1% rise – the same as recorded in June.
Figures from HM Revenue & Customs show that in the first six months of 2013 the number of home sales was up by 6% on 2012 at 495,000. Figures for the number of mortgages approved suggest that momentum has continued, with the number rising by 6% between the first and second quarter of the year.
Halifax’s housing economist, Martin Ellis, said: “Greater confidence is likely to have underpinned the increase in housing demand. Official schemes, such as Funding for Lending and Help to Buy, may also be raising demand.”
However, he added: “House prices are expected to continue to rise gradually through this year with only modest economic growth and still falling real earnings constraining housing demand and activity.”
The Funding for Lending scheme, launched in August 2012 to encourage banks and building societies to offer more loans to businesses and households, has been credited with making mortgages more readily available and affordable to homebuyers and remortgagors, and seems to be offering support to the housing market.
Recently, the Council of Mortgage Lenders reported that the number of first-time buyers reached a six-year high in May, and on Monday there were even signs of a return to sub-prime lending.
Mark Harris, chief executive of mortgage broker SPF Private Clients, said: “The outlook for the housing market continues to improve as increased mortgage availability, better rates and more choice at higher loan-to-values combine to make buyers more confident about their ability to get funding.
‘Sixth consecutive monthly rise’ for house prices | Money | theguardian.com.
Even as home prices and mortgage rates rise, there are still bargains available for borrowers looking to purchase rental properties.
According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2013 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey, investment-home purchases accounted for 24 percent of all sales in 2012, the second highest mark since 2005.
“Investors have been very active in the market over the past two years, attracted mostly by discounted foreclosures that could be quickly turned into profitable rentals,” Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said in a statement.
While rental properties are certainly appealing, offering the promise of monthly cash flow in addition to long-term appreciation, investment properties have a number of costs that are both visible and hidden, says Michael Whitbeck, real estate investor and founder of Residential Mortgage Underwriting and Processing Institute, a mortgage underwriting training firm in West Bloomfield, Mich. Even the most obvious expenses, like the monthly mortgage payment, might pack a few surprises.
Before you start searching for rental properties, run the numbers to understand whether investing in a rental property will be a windfall or a money pit.