The median price for a single-family house fell 14% to $169,000 in the first quarter from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors reported.
The trade group said first-time home buyers accounted for half of all purchases in the quarter, and many of them zeroed in on foreclosed homes. The median price for the latest quarter is down 26% from a peak of $227,600 in the third quarter of 2005. The latest median price was down from a year earlier in 134 of the 152 metro areas included in the survey.
The biggest increase was in the Cumberland area of Maryland and West Virginia, where the median price climbed 21% to $114,900. Debbie Grimm, manager of the Long & Foster real-estate brokerage in Cumberland, Md., said the area is attracting retirees and second-home buyers, particularly from Washington and Baltimore.
The lowest median price among the metro areas was $30,300 in Saginaw, Mich., and the highest was $570,000 in Honolulu. Most of the areas with the lowest prices are in troubled parts of the industrial Midwest. But a glut of homes in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., pushed the median down 59% from a year earlier to $87,300 -- ranking it just below Gary, Ind., which, at $92,000, was down 26%.
Sales of single-family homes and condominiums declined 6.8% from a year earlier to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.6 million units. But sales were up sharply in some areas hardest hit by the housing bust, largely because bargain hunters were out in force. States with big sales increases from the depressed levels of a year before included Nevada (up 117%), California (81%) and Arizona (50%) and Florida (25%)....more
Saturday
Challenges rise in developing Olympic Village..
Real estate developers are starting to get a glimpse of the challenges they’ll face in developing the athletes’ village if Chicago is chosen to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Among them is building up to 2,500 residential units that will hit the market all at once, obtaining financing and meeting the needs of the Olympics and those of the private market, which is the final destination for the project. Cassandra Francis, who is spearheading the project for the Chicago 2016 bid committee, offered some details during a luncheon Wednesday sponsored by the Chicago School of Real Estate at Roosevelt University.
The village is the highest-priced item to be built for the games. It’s a nearly $1-billion project on the site of the former Michael Reese Hospital on the city’s South Side. Although Chicago is buying the site for $86 million, the city and the Olympics organizing community are counting on private developers to construct and finance the housing project. That has become an increasingly dicey proposition since London and Vancouver, British Columbia, sites of the next two Olympics, have needed government help to keep privately developed villages on track.
Financing could be hard to line up because banks are no longer lending as generously as they did before, raising questions about whether private developers can handle the project alone.
“That’s one of the concerns the (International Olympic Committee) has,” Ms. Francis said. “We do believe we can get traditional financing.” She said the bid committee also is looking into federal financing for portions of the project that involve affordable housing, housing for seniors and student housing. ..more
Among them is building up to 2,500 residential units that will hit the market all at once, obtaining financing and meeting the needs of the Olympics and those of the private market, which is the final destination for the project. Cassandra Francis, who is spearheading the project for the Chicago 2016 bid committee, offered some details during a luncheon Wednesday sponsored by the Chicago School of Real Estate at Roosevelt University.
The village is the highest-priced item to be built for the games. It’s a nearly $1-billion project on the site of the former Michael Reese Hospital on the city’s South Side. Although Chicago is buying the site for $86 million, the city and the Olympics organizing community are counting on private developers to construct and finance the housing project. That has become an increasingly dicey proposition since London and Vancouver, British Columbia, sites of the next two Olympics, have needed government help to keep privately developed villages on track.
Financing could be hard to line up because banks are no longer lending as generously as they did before, raising questions about whether private developers can handle the project alone.
“That’s one of the concerns the (International Olympic Committee) has,” Ms. Francis said. “We do believe we can get traditional financing.” She said the bid committee also is looking into federal financing for portions of the project that involve affordable housing, housing for seniors and student housing. ..more
Federal Housing Rescue Plan Launches ...
The Obama Administration’s program to rescue distressed home owners got off the ground this week. The program was announced on Feb. 18, but it took several weeks to put the bureaucracy in place.Six of the nation’s largest banks signed up to participate, the Treasury Department announced Wednesday. They are JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, GMAC Mortgage, Saxon Mortgage Services, and Select Portfolio Servicing.Treasury says it is allocating $50 billion to the program. The Department of Housing and Urban Development will provide the rest.The plan calls for loan servicers to reduce interest rates so a family’s monthly mortgage obligation is no more than 38 percent of its pre-tax income. Loan servicers also can reduce loan balances. After the loans are modified, the government then provides enough money to reduce payments to 31 percent of income.Participating servicers get $1,000 a year for each modification and another $1,000 a year for three years if the borrower remains current. Servicers get an extra $500 if they do the modifications before the borrower falls behind in his payments—and the borrower gets $1,500. Also, homeowners get $1,000 a year for five years if they remain current on their payments. The money must be used to reduce their principal balances.
Source: CNN, Tami Luhby (04/16/2009)
Source: CNN, Tami Luhby (04/16/2009)
10 Happiest States in the U.S. ...
MainStreet.com’s Happiness Index examined household income, debt, employment, and foreclosures to choose the states that are surviving the current economic crisis with the most panache.The analysis discovered that despite disastrous conditions in parts of Michigan and Ohio, overall, the Midwest is navigating the financial meltdown with the highest average salaries, lowest unemployment, and fewest foreclosures. In fact, Nebraska, in the center of the corn belt, scores highest on MainStreet’s Happiness Index.Here are the rest of the top-10 happiest states:
Nebraska
Iowa
Kansas
Hawaii
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Wyoming
South Dakota
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Source: MainStreet.com, Stephen Dalton (04/06/2009)
Nebraska
Iowa
Kansas
Hawaii
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Wyoming
South Dakota
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Source: MainStreet.com, Stephen Dalton (04/06/2009)
10 Riskiest U.S. Housing Markets...
Even with hints of a housing recovery in some places, risky markets, dominated by nonprime mortgages, still prevail in a number of areas. Forbes magazine and Moody’s Economy.com surveyed the 200 largest metropolitan areas, adding up the number of loans to low-rated borrowers and dividing that sum by the total number of mortgages to calculate the percentage of each area’s market that is below prime. Here are the 10 metro areas with the highest percentages of nonprime mortgages, which makes them susceptible to defaults as unemployment rates continue to rise.
Mission, Texas
Detroit
Miami
Brownsville, Texas
Merced, Calif.
Lakeland, Fla.
Bakersfield, Calif.
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Visalia, Calif.
Source: Forbes, Maha Atal (03/31/2009)
Mission, Texas
Detroit
Miami
Brownsville, Texas
Merced, Calif.
Lakeland, Fla.
Bakersfield, Calif.
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
San Bernardino, Calif.
Visalia, Calif.
Source: Forbes, Maha Atal (03/31/2009)
Big Improvement to First-Time Buyer Tax Credit ...
Shaun Donovan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, on Tuesday said that the Federal Housing Administration is going to permit its lenders to allow home buyers to use the $8,000 tax credit as a down payment.Previously, most buyers wouldn't receive the funds until after they filed their tax return, and that deterred some people from using the credit. The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® has been calling for the change. “We all want to enable FHA consumers to access the home buyer tax credit funds when they close on their home loans so that the cash can be used as a down payment.” Mr. Donovan says FHA’s approved lenders will be permitted to “monetize” the tax credit through short-term bridge loans. This will allow eligible home buyers to access the funds immediately at the closing table.
courtesy NAR
courtesy NAR
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