• Fresh data on employment conditions at the metro level was released this morning. This data has some lag time so the latest information is as of March.
• Jobs are one of the important factors affecting home sales. Among the areas where the housing market crash was brutal, Phoenix and Miami look poised for a sustainable recovery. Phoenix added 40,300 jobs in the past 12 months, while Miami-Ft. Lauderdale added 32,200. Job gains were light in Orlando and Ft. Myers. Las Vegas and the non-coastal California markets were also a step slow in jobs recovery. Turning to the Midwest, Detroit is coming back with 26,600 net new jobs, but Cleveland is showing no traction.
• As for small towns, Ft. Wayne (IN) and all the small towns across North Dakota did very well. The fastest flyers were Lafayette (LA) and Odessa (TX) where they have added 10% or more jobs from just 12 months ago.
• Job performance for every market is shown here.

Homebuilders experienced a 22% order growth in the first quarter and are riding a tailwind heading into the second, causing Barclays Capital housing analysts to see the first signs of price increases coming back to the market.

“Not everywhere, but in enough places to matter,” they say.

In many of the markets that Barclays reviewed, it witnessed a return of broad-based price increases — a possibility, it says, very few industry watchers considered.

Stephen Kim, managing director of Barclays’ homebuilding division, tells HousingWire that Phoenix, Denver, Orange County, Calif., Westchester County, N.Y., and even parts of the hard-hit Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., region is witnessing price comebacks.

However, commentary so far from builders reveals mixed opinions about how broad-based the increases are.

The most upbeat commentary regarding pricing has come from Lennar ($28.42 1.04%), Meritage Homes ($29.05 0%) and Ryland Group ($22.71 1.09%). Those three builders have posted the strongest order trends. All three indicate to Barclays that the opportunity for price increases is stretching from geographies and buyer types.

D.R. Horton ($16.52 0.38%), PulteGroup ($10.08 0.5%) and M/I Homes ($14.04 0.34%) posted order gains of 10% to 20%, but were relatively more cautious about their ability to secure price increases on a broad basis, analysts say.

“Yet, looking past the rhetoric, we believe that the underlying market condition being described on all of the calls is fairly consistent: Price increases are still not the norm, but in the top 25% to 35% of the builders’ communities, they are back and forcing analysts to rethink what housing’s recovery can look like in 2012,” analysts contend.

The builders are benefiting in part from low inventories of existing homes, which are being snapped up by investors and foreign buyers. That has prompted a number of consumers to start considering new homes.

Click on the image below to see a three-year breakout of homebuilder order growth:

Homebuilder orders per community are running at 2.3 per month, the highest first-quarter rate in four years. There’s still a long path ahead, however. Analysts at Barclays expect absorption rates to return to their long-term average of 3.5 sales per community per month over the next few years.

“So far, the order activity in the first quarter has lived up to our high expectations, making us comfortable with our outlook for 22% order growth in the second quarter,” they say.

With the noticeable exception of KB Home ($8.88 0.43%), sales growth at builders that have reported was quite strong, led by Meritage with a 36% increase. The order decline at KB Home is due to company-specific disruptions with its mortgage partner. Excluding it, the group’s orders are up an average of 26% annually.

Commentary on most of the conference calls indicates that trends strengthened in the quarter and that this pace continued in April.

Additionally, the recent strength in homebuilder orders might suggest that housing starts are set to elevate over the next few months. There is a close relationship between sales orders reported by builders and single-family housing starts reported in the following quarter.

Based on the orders announced this quarter, Barclays estimates that single-family housing starts over the next few months will average 493,000 after the 462,000 reported last month and 431,000 for the full year 2011.

U.S. home values edged up 0.5% from February to March, making it the largest monthly increase in six years, real estate data firm Zillow ($33.45 0%) said in its latest home value index.

The data arrived the same week as Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller national indices report.

The S&P Case-Shiller note, which measures real estate data further out, said home values in nine metro areas reached record lows. S&P reported that its 10-city composite index experienced an annual home-price decline of 3.6% in February, while the 20-city composite index declined 3.5% from a year earlier.  

Zillow, which evaluates home prices in 30 markets using its value index, reported that nineteen markets have either reached a bottom in home prices or are expected to hit bottom by year’s end. 

Optimism is spreading over markets like Phoenix and Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, with Zillow estimating home price increases of 6.5% and 5.6%, respectively, in the two cities over the next year or so.

Nationally, home prices are expected to remain flat over the next 12 months, with values reaching a bottom in late 2012 and falling approximately 0.4% from the first quarter of 2012 to the first period of 2013, Zillow said.  

Metro areas like Chicago and Atlanta, on the other hand, are expected to see home price declines in the 3.8-to-4.1% range over the next 12 months.

“For people who have been waiting to time their home purchase close to market bottom, it’s time to start shopping,” said Zillow chief economist Dr. Stan Humphries. “When the bottom will hit will vary by market, and it’s nearly impossible to time a purchase exactly right. But home prices are not the only part of the equation. Buyers also should take into account the possibility that rising mortgage rates could offset any further home value declines that may occur.”