homesmillbrae.com » Price Appreciation

Short Supply Pushes Home Prices to Seven Year High

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 06:48:28 +0000

“House price growth continues to surprise to the upside,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Increasing demand for new and existing homes, coupled with low inventory, has created a virtuous cycle for price gains, most clearly seen in the Western states with year-over-year gains of 20 percent or more.”

(Read More: Map: Tracking the US Real Estate Recovery)

The five states with the highest price appreciation were Nevada, up 24.6 percent, California, up 19.4 percent, Arizona, up 17.3 percent, Hawaii, up 17 percent and Oregon, up 15.5 percent, according to CoreLogic.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100788242

Home prices keep on ratcheting up as Bay Area outpaces national growth

Thu, 30 May 2013 11:20:24 +0000

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Homes keep getting bid up over asking, which keeps pushing up prices. Another week, another real estate report showing that home prices are on a tear, with the Bay Area among the nation’s leaders. This time, it was the SP/Case-Shiller home-price index showing double-digit prices increases.

Here are photos from one of those now-commonplace scenarios: A perfectly nice, but not extraordinary house that went for way over asking. In this case it was a four-bedroom rancher in Walnut Creek’s Larkey Park area. Listed for $615,950, it went for $650,000 — $34,050 or 5.5 percent over asking.

On average, homes in the 9-county San Francisco Bay Area area are selling for 103.6 percent of asking; this time last year, they went for 100 percent of asking, said Lanny Baker, CEO of Emeryville’s ZipRealty.

Realtors around the Bay Area continue to report flocks of buying chasing super-tight inventory. ZipRealty shows that for-sale Bay Area inventory is down 43 percent from this time last year to only about 6,998 homes. In 22 out of 24 metro areas it tracks nationwide, ZipRealty “saw more new listings as of April 30 compared to April 30, 2012,” it said in a report. “San Francisco and Austin were the only two metros showing slight declines in new listings.”

“Five of the top seven cities in our national report on price appreciation are in California,” Baker said. “We see San Francisco (metro) as the No. 1 city in the country right now for price momentum,”

In the Case-Shiller report, prices for a 20-city composite index were up 10.9 percent in March versus a year earlier. For the SF metro, which Case-Shiller defines as the counties of San Francisco, Marin, San Mateo, Alameda and Contra Costa, the increase was a strong 22.2 percent, second only to Phoenix’s 22.5 percent gain. For an in-depth look at the report and its implications, click here.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Follow her on Twitter: @csaid

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2013/05/29/homes-prices-keep-on-ratcheting-up-as-bay-area-outpaces-national-growth/

Finally: Supply of Homes for Sale Begins to Rise

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 23:45:43 +0000

So the increase in supply is welcome news, as the severe lack of homes for sale has been pushing home prices higher far faster than anyone expected. That swift jump in prices, along with low supply, have been hampering sales, which were up just 0.8 percent month-to-month in February, missing analysts’ expectations. Single-family home sales were actually weaker, while condo sales jumped nearly 9 percent from January.

“Rapid price appreciation is not good news for home buyers,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR. “Wages are up just 2-3 percent, while prices are rising 4-5 times that.”

(Read More: Home Resales Hit 3-Year High but Miss Forecasts)

With the increase in supplies came a return of all-cash investors, who had been moving out of the market, causing sales of homes on the low end to plummet. Investors made up 22 percent of home buyers in February, according to the Realtors, up from 19 percent in January. All-cash sales hit 32 percent, up from 28 percent, and distressed home sales also increased to 25 percent of all sales, from 23 percent.

Low inventory has kept first-time home buyers, who largely seek lower-priced homes, out of the market. Newlyweds Brian and Ali Earle have been looking for a home in Northern Virginia for almost a year.

“There’s not a lot out there,” Brian said. “It’s actually amazing. We see houses go under contract in a day or two, and so we really have to be on top of the game and be willing to drop everything and run and go check out a house, or it’ll be gone.”

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100577800

Americans Are Using Their Houses as ATMs Again

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 04:29:37 +0000

With home prices up 8 percent year-over-year in December, according to the latest reading from CoreLogic, homeowners are regaining home equity at a fast clip—1.4 million borrowers rose above water on their mortgages through the end of September. That number likely increased as price appreciation accelerated toward the end of the year.

Does this mean a return to the reckless equity withdrawals of the housing bubble? Likely not.

“I would guess that most of the current home equity line borrowing is quite prudent. We know that it is being very conservatively underwritten with plenty of equity,” said Guy Cecala, editor of Inside Mortgage Finance.

(Read More: Housing Already Shows Signs of a New Bubble.)

While it is too early to say exactly what borrowers are spending this new cash on, anecdotal evidence shows borrowers are largely sinking the money back into their homes.

“We are seeing more responsible uses today, like home improvements, education expenses or other major expenses that would be a more responsible use of a customer’s home equity,” Blackwell said.

The average home equity line in October of 2012 was just below $90,000 compared to October 2006, when lines averaged just over $100,000, according to Equifax.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100446233

Already Time to Throw Up Caution Signs on Housing?

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:11:33 +0000

Fitch contends that home prices remain overvalued and that price growth is not being driven by fundamentals but by technical factors that could easily change. As more homes move more quickly to final foreclosure, especially in states that require a judge in the process and have seen huge delays over the past few years, supply will expand, possibly dramatically in some regions.

Mortgage rates may also be headed higher. Several members of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) thought it would “probably be appropriate to slow or to stop purchases [of assets including mortgage-backed securities] well before the end of 2013,” according to minutes of the committee’s latest meeting. Doing so would push mortgage rates higher. (Read More: Mortgage Recovery Still Rocky.)

Fitch analysts admit price recovery will vary widely depending on the local market conditions, but their case seems more bearish than most. Or is it?

“I personally think that a lot of the price appreciation we’re seeing in many markets right now is because the market of tradable homes is thinner than usual because of high negative equity,” said Zillow’s chief economist Stan Humphries. “This condition will change as home price gains pull homeowners out of negative equity and the market becomes more fluid.”

Zillow’s home value index was up 5.2 percent annually in November, but Humphries expects appreciation over the next twelve months of just 2.5 percent. He cites decreasing unemployment, rent increases, rising household formation and “essentially a five-year hiatus” in home building. (Read More: Most Affordable US Cities.)

Supply and demand, as they always have historically, will determine home prices going forward; unfortunately, both of those are currently too complicated and too economically sensitive to predict.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100355400

Property Flippers Are Back as Housing’s New Middle Men

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 07:07:26 +0000

Who can forget the heady days of the housing boom when property flippers would follow condo developers around like hungry wolves, waiting to pounce on new projects before one grain of earth had moved?

Property auctions for single family homes weren’t any different, as novice buyers were scooping up multiple properties only to flip them for a profit in a matter of weeks.

Those days are gone; the price appreciation is gone, and the funding is gone…but apparently the flippers are back. Some of them never left. Close to 100,000 properties were flipped in the first six months of this year, according to RealtyTrac, which defines flipping as a home bought and sold within six months. That is a 25 percent jump from a year ago. But flipping is not what it used to be.

“There is this kind of middle man investor who is doing the flipping,” says RealtyTrac’s Daren Blomquist, who ran a webinar last month titled, “Why Property Flipping is Flying High in 2012.” Blomquist says the difference for today’s flippers is that they must add value to the home before selling, because price appreciation alone won’t net the profit they seek. That means rehabbing, which can be pricey, depending on the condition of the property. Many of the distressed homes now that flippers seek have been either ransacked by former owners or left vacant and untended for years.

(Read More: How to Play the Housing ‘Boom’)

“You don’t see any of that highly speculative flipping where it’s solely reliant on the home prices going up for the flip to work,” says Blomquist, which is why many flippers are middle men. They flip to other investors in order to get the profit they need. “It’s probably easier to flip to another investor because this person is an experienced buyer and should have their ducks in a row in terms of being able to finance the property, if not pay up front in cash.”

Large-scale, big money investors, like hedge funds, have flooded the single family real estate market, looking for rental properties that will produce good yield. While some have their own teams attending foreclosure auctions and doing the rehabilitation and remodeling, many would rather buy turn-key products, even if the price is slightly higher. The “pure” property flip appears to be less popular, although in some stronger markets it is certainly still happening.

(Read More: Cities With the Most Affordable Homes)

“I have seen a return of flipping, but only at the individual or small investor level. In some cases, these investors are targeting larger, institutional investors as potential buyers,” says Rick Sharga of Carrington Mortgage Holdings, a large fund investing in single family rentals. “I haven’t seen institutional investors doing much flipping (although they will occasionally sell off a few properties from a pool if the homes don’t fit their business model).”

Investors planning a REIT would not be flippers, Sharga notes, as what they need is a large pool of rental homes delivering the cash flow a REIT would require. Most of the larger investors are paying market price (sometimes a little less, sometimes more), which makes profitable flipping difficult.

(Read More: A Risky Lifeline for Seniors Is Costing Some Their Homes)

Until the rental market chills and the housing market shows strong price gains, pure property flipping will not be nearly as lucrative as it once was. On the positive side, continued strength in the single family rental market and the ensuing large investors interest offers smaller investors willing to do the dirty work a large pool of cash-heavy buyers.

Sector Watch: Construction General Building Materials

The Home Depot
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Lowe’s Companies
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The Sherwin-Williams Company
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E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
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Apogee Enterprises
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Questions? Comments? And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49419503?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS