房屋贷款, 地产新闻

http://www.smartmoney.com/Personal-Finance/Real-Estate/buyers-shun-new-homes-1301521568482/?cid=yahoofinance

While the real estate market has struggled across the board, new homes have been hit harder than ever before. Existing home sales are down about 3% in the last year, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors. That’s peanuts compared to new home sales, which have fallen a whopping 28%, according to the U.S. Census. To some extent, existing homes have always recovered before new construction, but analysts say this situation is so extreme that it could delay a meaningful recovery for the new-home market by two more years.

The reason for the discrepancy is clear, experts say: New homes are currently 29% more expensive than existing homes, about double the typical margin, according to the NAR. At the same time, there are some radical discounts in the existing home market, foreclosures and short sales specifically, which accounted for nearly 40% of all sales in February. (In 2010, they accounted for 25% of all sales, according to RealtyTrac.com.)

But a shift in consumer psychology has also hurt new home sales. Pre-recession, buyers expected high-end appliances and fancy countertops, and builders delivered. Now consumers are more enthusiastic about a home that’s easier and cheaper to maintain, says Vogel. For many buyers, that even includes smaller rooms – a rarity in homes built during the real estate boom – that are more affordable to heat or cool. More buyers are also looking to live in or near a city – where relatively fewer new homes exist – to be closer to their job and to spend less on gasoline costs.

The trend doesn’t seem to be reversing itself any time soon. In spite of the lagging sales, new home prices are still expected to rise by nearly 1% this year, according to the NAR: Builders have all but stopped building, says David Crowe, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, and supply is dwindling.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42341713?__source=yahoo%7Cheadline%7Cother%7Ctext%7C&par=yahoo

With foreclosures numbering more than 200,000 a month and lending regulations tightening, more homeowners will be pushed into renting, which in turn will see a demand for apartments and multi-family homes increasing.

“The most severe housing collapse and recession in post-war history will naturally leave scars on the economy for years, with the housing market most vulnerable,” Michelle Meyer, economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, wrote in a research note for clients.

“The resulting decline in demand and tightening of credit has triggered a decline in homeownership and downsizing toward smaller homes, which in our view will underpin multifamily construction,” Meyer added.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014624050_apartments29.html

Things are looking up in the Seattle area’s apartment market — if you’re a landlord.

The vacancy rate kept dropping over the past few months while rents kept rising, according to two recently released reports.

Both trends began a year or more ago. They will continue for at least the rest of this year, according to research firms Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors and Apartment Insights Washington, the authors of the new reports.

The number of new apartments in King and Snohomish counties slated for completion this year is just one-third the number of 2009.

Apartment Insights surveyed apartment complexes with 50 or more units. It pegged King County’s vacancy rate this month at 4.99 percent, the first time it’s been below 5 percent since late 2007.

Dupre + Scott looked at projects with 20 or more apartments. It said the county vacancy rate in March was 4.3 percent, down from 4.9 percent last September and 6.8 percent two years ago.

Rents have risen, both firms reported, while the number of landlords offering incentives to lure tenants has dropped. So has the monetary value of those incentives.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/More-people-signed-contracts-apf-1373085761.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

二月份签约买房的人数小幅上扬。据NAR统计，二手房的签约率较上月上涨2.1%。除Northeast以外的其他地区都有上涨。西雅图所在的West上涨了7%。

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Housing-market-13-of-all-US-cnnm-62477853.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

Maine had the highest proportion of empty housing stock, at 22.8%. Other states with gluts of empty houses included Vermont (20.5%), Florida (17.5%), Arizona (16.3%) and Alaska (15.9%).

Connecticut has a vacancy rate of just 7.9%, the lowest of all the states. Besides Connecticut, the other states with lowest vacancy rates are California, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia and Washington, all at 9.2% or lower.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/For-real-estate-a-giant-apf-479853388.html?x=0

At the Sunset Ridge estates, the amenity bonanza gets even more surreal: Buy a customizable colonial for as little as $170,000 and get a brand new, $17,000 Chevy Cruze. The 2011 model. For free.

The festival of upgrades on new homes — especially in the housing markets that were savaged by the subprime meltdown — is queasy confirmation of just how much the housing market remains the sickest part of the U.S. economy.

http://www.northjersey.com/realestate/announcements/118632209_Single_ladies_top_home-buying_charts_.html

Almost twice as many single women (20 percent) are buying homes than single men (12 percent), according to the most recent statistics from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The reason? Because they can.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-home-sales-slowest-in-at-apf-1641198396.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=5&asset=&ccode=

New home sales are now just half the pace of 1963 — even though there are 120 million more people in the United States now.

Diminished sales have driven the median price of a new home down to about $202,000, the lowest since 2003.

Sales of new homes plunged in February to an annual rate of 250,000. Last year, 323,000 new homes were sold — the worst year on record and the fifth straight year of declines.

In 1963, when the U.S. population was about 190 million — compared with today’s nearly 310 million — far more new homes were sold: 560,000.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Home-sales-fell-96-pct-in-apf-280585237.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=

The National Association of Realtors say sales of previously occupied homes fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million. That’s down 9.6 percent from 5.4 million in January. The pace is far below the 6 million homes a year that economists say represents a healthy market.

The median sales price fell 5.2 percent to $156,100, the lowest level since April 2002.

Sales of homes at risk of foreclosure rose to 39 percent of all sales in February.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Doubledigit-rent-rise-is-cnnm-1354637756.html?x=0

In the hottest rental markets, the increases will likely top the 10% mark annually for the next couple of years, according to Lesley Deutch of John Burns Real Estate Consulting. In San Diego, she anticipates rents will rise more than 31% by 2015. In Seattle rents will climb 29% over that period; and in Boston, they may jump between 25% and 30%.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Newhome-construction-plunges-apf-3427781814.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=main&asset=&ccode=

The Commerce Department says home construction plunged to a seasonally adjusted 479,000 homes last month, down 22.5% from the previous month. It was the lowest level since April 2009 and the second-lowest on records dating back more than a half-century.

The building pace is far below the 1.2 million units a year that economists consider healthy.

The drop in home construction activity was felt coast to coast. It fell 48.6% in the Midwest, 37.5% in the Northeast, 28 percent in the West and 6.3% in the South.

Economists say falling prices, sluggish sales and the weak construction rate all point to a housing market that is years away from a recovery.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41782063?__source=yahoo%7Cheadline%7Cother%7Ctext%7C&par=yahoo

More multi-family properties are becoming cash flow positive due to a combination of lower property values and mortgage costs (from continued low interest rates) and resilient rents.

Looking ahead, multi-family vacancy rates are forecast to decline from 5.8 percent in the current quarter to 4.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Lower vacancy rates give landlords more leeway to raise rents and reduce concessions such as one-month-free rent specials. Indeed, effective rents are also improving, with 76 of the 82 apartment markets tracked by Reis posting year-over-year rent increases through the fourth quarter.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Foreclosure-filings-plunge-27-cnnm-2123631007.html?x=0

Allegations of improper foreclosure processing continued to dog the mortgage servicing industry and disrupt court dockets. The industry is in the midst of a major overhaul that has severely restricted its capacity to process foreclosures.

Another contributing factor was the harsh winter weather that covered much of the country during the month. That delayed some of the paperwork processing and the serving of notices of default, notices of auction sales and other filings.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/More-people-are-buying-their-cnnm-344687707.html?x=0

The number of homes bought with cash jumped to 32% in January compared to 26% a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors.

In Southern California, about 30% of the sales in January were cash, according to DataQuick Information Systems. Same thing in Denver. In Phoenix and Las Vegas, cash sales topped 50% of all deals.

http://www.smartmoney.com/Personal-Finance/Real-Estate/new-rules-for-firsttime-home-buyers-1299539050817/?cid=yahoofinance

就在不久以前，首次买房者的比例占房屋销售的40%，现在则下降到了29%，而且这个比例还在持续下降。专家认为，这主要是因为费用和利率都在持续上涨。本月，新房屋贷款的费用将会上涨0.5%。到4月份，小额首付贷款(small-down-payment mortgages)的费用将会急剧上涨。与此同时，越来越多的贷款公司要求更高的首付，比如说20%甚至更高，以此来降低银行自身所承担的风险。

http://www.cnbc.com/id/41968547?__source=yahoo%7Cheadline%7Cquote%7Ctext%7C&par=yahoo

In Q4, 23 percent of borrowers nationwide, or 11.1 million, were holding “underwater” mortgages; that’s a collective $750 billion of negative equity, according to the latest survey from CoreLogic. That’s up from 22.5 percent, or 10.8 million, in Q3, again, thanks to falling home prices. To make matters worse, 2.4 million borrowers have less than 5 percent equity in their homes, deemed as “near-negative” equity.

Of course negative equity is concentrated in the hardest hit states: Nevada (65 percent), Arizona (51 percent), Florida (47 percent), Michigan (36 percent) and California (32 percent). This as the consensus among housing watchers is that home prices will fall another 5 to 10 percent this year before slowly climbing back. That means negative equity will climb another ten percentage points.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Milliondollar-homes-sales-cnnm-687577347.html?x=0

After four straight years of declines, sales of million-dollar homes and condos rose last year in all 20 major metro areas, according to DataQuick Information Systems. On average, these cities saw an 18.6% jump in high-end home sales.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2014390403_homesales04.html

二月份King County销售的房屋中间价是$334,000，比前一个月的$356,000和去年二月份的$373,010都有所下降。现在的价格几乎与2005年3月份相当，比2007年的最高峰跌了30%。

据房屋经纪公司Windermere分析，房价下降的主要原因在于银行大量倾销short sale的房产。二月份的困难房屋数量占总销售量的37%。如果扣除这些销售，房屋销售的中间价则高得多，达到$390,000。

很多lender都不想再继续持有困难资产。Everett有一个Condo，在开始时要价$100,000，几个月没有人看房，于是lender授权，降到$60,000。两周后，又降到$50,000。Condo最后终于卖掉了。

即使是这样，银行积压的困难资产仍在持续增加，二月份的库存比一月份多了80%。

不过，在有些社区，比如说West Bellevue和Mercer Island，困难资产却非常稀少，所以他们的房价没有受到太大影响。如果在这些地方的Seller收到多个offer，就一点也不奇怪。

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Home-prices-Should-you-buy-a-cnnm-2730615297.html?x=0