homesmillbrae.com » Sales Numbers

Home builders boost prices amid rising rates

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 03:40:36 +0000

Mortgage rates jumped over a full percentage point from May through June of this year, robbing home buyers of much-needed purchasing power. While they have now settled back a bit, they are far from the record lows of the past two years.

“The recent increase in mortgage rates hasn’t slowed demand, as long as home affordability remains high,” noted Bob Walters, chief economist at Quicken Loans. “We are, however, seeing an increased urgency from potential new home buyers as they move to secure today’s historically low rates.”

New home sales jumped more than 8 percent month-to-month in June, but May’s sales numbers were revised sharply lower, and prices, while up from a year ago, are down 11.5 percent from April. That has some housing skeptics less optimistic about the builders’ prospects.

(Read more: Map: Tracking the US real estate recovery)

“Remember, last month on the ‘strong’ but FAKE new home sales print of 476k, home builders rallied, and every bull took a huge victory lap. Today we learned that was all garbage,” noted California-based analyst Mark Hanson. “Bottom line: May was a huge miss. Prices have tumbled as rates surged. And June is suspect because of the huge lower May revision.”

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100910336

Bay Area rents, home prices up sharply

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 07:04:47 +0000

If you’re seeking a new pad in the Bay Area, you can expect to pay more than a year ago whether you’re buying or renting, according to a report released Wednesday.

Asking prices for homes for sale around the Bay Area rose substantially in December compared with the same time last year, according to San Francisco real estate website Trulia, ranging from a 16.3 percent spike in tech-fueled Santa Clara County to a 7.6 percent increase in Napa County. The nine-county Bay Area saw an average increase of 13 percent. By comparison, asking prices nationwide rose 5.1 percent in December compared with December 2011, Trulia said.

“Both job growth and tighter inventory gave (sale) prices a lift,” said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s chief economist. “Price increases accelerated throughout 2012, getting bigger as the year went on.”

Analyzing asking prices of homes currently for sale provides a leading indicator of what sales numbers are likely to look like in a few months’ time, Trulia said.

Data on sales throughout much of 2012 have shown the housing market recovering from the extended downturn that started in 2007.

Nationwide, Trulia said, “2012 marked a huge turnaround year for most local housing markets” with prices increasing in 82 of the 100 largest metro areas in December. In December 2011, only 12 markets had price increases.

Las Vegas, Seattle and Phoenix were Trulia’s “top turnaround” markets, followed by Oakland metro (Alameda and Contra Costa counties) and San Jose metro (Santa Clara and San Benito counties).

California cities such as Sacramento and Fresno that were devastated by the housing crisis also saw strong gains in 2012, Trulia said.

“Nine of the top 10 turnaround markets in 2012 were in the West,” Kolko said. “The only one east of the Rockies was Atlanta.”

Asking rents also rose, with Alameda County seeing the biggest spike (13.2 percent) and already pricey San Francisco the least (2.9 percent), Trulia said. The average increase for eight Bay Area counties (Napa did not have enough data) was 7.8 percent. Nationwide, rents grew 5.2 percent.

“We’re seeing rent increases across the region,” Kolko said. “In San Francisco they were smaller because rents are already so much higher there than elsewhere and it has had strong rent increases before this. The slower increase doesn’t make the city affordable.”

While rising home prices illustrate a housing market beginning to recover – and to stimulate economic recovery – they of course are not good news for those house hunting.

“They come with the perennial challenge of affordability in the Bay Area,” Kolko said.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Bay-Area-rents-home-prices-up-sharply-4163037.php

After Brisk Summer, Pending Home Sales Drop in August

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 06:01:36 +0000

Fewer Americans signed contracts to buy existing homes in August. After gains in home sales over the spring and summer, an industry survey surprised expectations, registering a 2.6 percent drop in pending home sales from July. This drop forecasts that final closings on existing homes will be lower heading into fall.

“The performance in month-to-month contract signings has been uneven with ongoing shortages of lower priced inventory in much of the country, and across most price ranges in the West, but activity has remained at notably higher levels this year,” wrote National Association of Realtors’ chief economist Lawrence Yun in a release.

Yun pointed out that contract signings have been up year-over-year for sixteen consecutive months, which indicates overall home sales will be higher in 2012 than 2011. The Realtors predict a 9 percent gain to 4.64 million units.

Regionally, pending home sales rose slightly in the Northeast, up 0.9 percent month-to-month, but fell 2.6 percent in the Midwest, 1.1 percent in the South, and really plummeted out West, down 7.2 percent.

The drop in the West is largely due to a supply issue on the low end of the market. Investors have been fueling the low end with all-cash, bulk purchases of foreclosures in markets like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and parts of Southern California. Supplies of those homes have dropped dramatically, leaving little for those investors to buy.

Some housing analysts are concerned that the housing recovery so far has been driven so much by all-cash investors that as these supplies dwindle, due to continuing bank delays and more loan modifications, the overall home sales numbers will drop going into the end of the year.

New home sales for August also disappointed, coming in lower than expected. New home sales are measured by signed contracts, rather than closings.

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Questions? Comments? And follow me on Twitter @Diana_Olick

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/49193922?__source=RSS*blog*&par=RSS

Struggling to Make a House Call on Confidence

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:49:53 +0000

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Today’s report on consumer confidence, or the striking lack of it, is yet another sign that housing is going to be in a very sticky state for a while. It’s hard to say whether housing is weighing on confidence or lack of confidence is weighing on housing; the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Next week is a big week for housing because we get the all-important readings on existing and new home sales for May. The pending home sales index, based on contracts signed, not closings, fell dramatically in April, and that has the housing prognosticators building another arc for the flood of bad news yet to come. Home builder sentiment fell in June, largely based on competition from distressed properties and high material costs, but you can bet the builders know we’re in for some tough sales numbers in their market as well.

I know I’ve said this before, but here I go again: All real estate is local, but confidence is national. Potential summer buyers, who are historically few and far between, will be watching the national numbers, as they try to time the bottom of the market, which is of course impossible to do.

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Spring Real Estate Lessons; Too Early for Conclusions

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:08:05 +0000

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As our week-long Spring Realty Check draws to a close here in Chicago, I’m struggling to come up with a fundamental conclusion.

The trouble of course is that the Spring season isn’t over, and the housing and mortgage markets are facing so many unknowns that any conclusion would be ridiculous.

The one thing I can surmise, after talking to real estate industry types from Boston to Seattle and in between, is that housing is not roaring back right now, and may in fact be double-dipping,

We’ve already seen home prices take a turn for the worse again, but sales seemed to be picking up in January. Unfortunately that may have been short-lived. While all real estate is local, the sales numbers are not encouraging. RE/MAX just reported February home sales down 3 percent annually.

“This is the first time in four months that the year-to-year sales difference was not better than the previous month,” according to the report. Sales were up month to month, but not by much.

New construction isn’t faring much better. The home builders reported a slight tick up in sentiment this week, but that was all based on future expectations, not current sales and traffic.

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Realtors Seek Data Help

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 23:27:55 +0000

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It wasn’t at all what I expected. With accusations over the weekend by various journalists that the Realtors have been overestimating existing home sales numbers, I was ready for a full-court PR press at this morning’s monthly sales report lockup. Not so much.

NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun opened with, “This is going to be a fun press conference!” After detailing the usual monthly report, and carefully acknowledging a nearly 33 percentage point seasonal adjustment in sales numbers (!), Yun addressed the brewing controversy. He explained how they last “benchmarked” sales using Census figures back in 2000, but that they couldn’t do that in 2010 because the Census changed some of its survey questions. He admitted that the last revision to data in 2000 showed a 13 percent “drift,” as in the NAR’s numbers were 13 percent too high.

I won’t get into all the reasons for the “benchmark” troubles…okay, it’s really 3 reasons: 1) Consolidation of many MLS’s (multiple listing service—where Realtors list properties), so a rise in the numbers could be due to the MLS’s area getting bigger, not more sales, 2) Properties being listed on multiple MLS’s (so sales are double counted), and 3) A big drop in For Sale By Owner properties, so with more sellers using agents, there are more properties on the MLS to sell.

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