From Annie Lowery at the NY Times: Europe Split Over Austerity as a Path to Growth Economic fortunes during the recovery from the Great Recession have diverged, with new estimates of growth by the monetary fund expected on Tuesday. But they will not change the basic picture, which Ms. Lagarde has taken to describing...
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This is a quarterly index from the the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and is similar to the overall housing market index (HMI). The NAHB started this index in Q4 2008, so all readings are very low. From the NAHB: Builder Confidence in the 55+ Housing Market Continues to Improve in the Third...
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I attended the Zillow housing forum in San Francisco on Friday. The first panel discussed “Is it a Good Time to Buy in California?: The Housing Market’s New Normal”. The participants were John Burns, CEO, John Burns Real Estate Consulting, Bert Selva, President and CEO, Shea Homes, Eric Gutshall, President and COO, Haven Realty...
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Here is another update using inventory numbers from HousingTracker / DeptofNumbers to track changes in listed inventory. Tom Lawler mentioned this last year. According to the deptofnumbers.com for (54 metro areas), inventory is off 22.8% compared to the same week last year. Unfortunately the deptofnumbers only started tracking inventory in April 2006. This graph...
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First a few excerpts from this article by Diana Olick at CNBC: When Foreclosure Supplies Fall, the Bottom Falls Out of Housing While foreclosures brought home prices down initially, they are now driving them up because there is so much demand from investors and first time buyers, looking for bargains. Supplies of these cheap...
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From Realtor.com: May 2012 Real Estate Data On the national level, inventory of for-sale single family homes, condominiums, townhouses and co-ops declined by -20.07% in May 2012 compared to a year ago, and declined in all but two of the 146 markets covered by REALTOR.com. The median age of the inventory fell -9.78% on...
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The solid new home sales report this morning is further confirmation that the recovery for the housing industry has started. New home sales are up about 17% from the weakest three month period during the housing bust. That is a significant improvement, even if the absolute levels are still very low. The debate is...
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A couple of excerpts from an article by Neil Shah and Nick Timiraos at the WSJ: Housing Shows Signs of Life For the first time since 2005, investment in residential real-estate, including home building and renovation, has contributed to U.S. economic output for the past three quarters. … “Housing bottoming is going to surprise...
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Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist writes about housing seasonality today: Springtime for Housing The housing market rides the seasons. Year in and year out, market activity has predictable ups and downs. Sometimes those seasonal patterns are hard to see when longer-term trends (like plummeting housing prices) or one-off events (like the homebuyer tax credit)...
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In Feb 2010, Warren Buffett wrote: ithin a year or so residential housing problems should largely be behind us, the exceptions being only high-value houses and those in certain localities where overbuilding was particularly egregious. Of course I disagreed with his timing. Then in Feb 2011, Buffett wrote: A housing recovery will probably begin...
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