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Home Prices Rise For Fourth Consecutive Month
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices though July 2011 showed its fourth consecutive month of increases, with both the 10- and 20-city composites up 0.9 percent in July over June. David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Indices, said July's...
New Home Sales Up 6.1 Percent Over August 2010
Estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development show sales of new single-family houses were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 295,000, 2.3 percent below July's rate but 6.1 percent above August of last year. The...
Price Indexes Show Continued Gains For Home Values
According to three recently released home-price indexes, home values saw continued gains in July. The Federal Housing Finance Agency's price index, which includes the price of properties backing mortgages sold to or guaranteed by government-sponsored enterprises, rose...
Existing Home Sales Hit Five Month High
Sales of previously owned homes hit a five-month high in August, according to data from The National Association of Realtors. Existing-home sales spiked 7.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.03 million units, exceeding economists' expectations. Total sales, including...
Mortgage Application Activity Increases
According to The Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Applications Survey, the seasonally adjusted Market Composite Index, which measures total mortgage loan application volume, increase 0.6 percent last week from the previous week. On an unadjusted basis, the index...
Building Permits On The Rise In August
Permits to build privately-owned housing units in August rose 3.2 percent above July's estimates and 7.8 percent above last year, according to new residential construction statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development....
Builder Confidence Slips Slightly In September
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index measures builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes on a scale where any number below 50 indicates more builders view the market as poor than good. In September, the...
Encouraging Signs For Housing Despite Slow Economic Growth
The Mortgage Bankers Association's chief economist Jay Brinkmann doesn't foresee much improvement in the overall economy in coming months, though he sees rising home sales and further stabilization in the housing market's future. According to Brinkmann, booming rental...
Foreclosures Down 33 Percent From Last Year
RealtyTrac's U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for August 2011 shows foreclosure filings, including default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions, were down 33 percent from August 2010 but up 7.0 percent from July. Despite the month-over-month increase,...
Mortgage Rates Fall To New All Time Low
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association's Weekly Applications Survey, the average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 4.17 percent last week from 4.23 percent the week before. The 30-year rate is the lowest in the history of the...