Location and High-End Homes In Demand According to Wall Street Journal. People Still Have Money in Their Bank Accounts–Now They May Be Spending it.

MBA Reports That Home Purchase Applications Fall to a 13-Year Low — It’s Getting Uglier Out There Folks Today’s signed home purchase contracts become next quarters closings (where the real estate transaction industry gets paid).   And the news is not good.  Applications for home purchase… Read more

It’s not just the house loan that is taking a toll on borrowers, but the car loans, credit card balances and college loans.  Typical homeowners getting loan relief under the President’s initiatives spent 44.8 percent of their pretax income on housing prior to loan modification,… Read more

We spend 10 hours looking for a new car (which depreciates), four hours searching and shopping for a new computer and just five hours for a new mortgage according to a Zillow Survey.  http://zillow.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=159&item=201

http://www.costar.com/news/Article.aspx?id=CB58F9797974B3A09990193DBF51EC19 In the article accessible via the link above, the CoStar Group reports that Q1 2010 Bank results are better than somewhat expected in regards to continued deterioration of commercial real estate.  The question becomes, however, if we are using the logic “a rolling loan… Read more

NAR summarizes NY Times article on homebuyer tax credits – expensive but they worked.  The linked article estimates that more than $8 billion of payments (through February 2010) went to people that would have purchased the home regardless. http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2010042801?OpenDocument

Record 19 Million Vacant US Homes (and why prices are NOT going up for the next 18 to 24 months) http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-vacant-housing-hits-record-19-million-2010-04-26?siteid=nbih

Demand for real estate is a function of effective demand (and that really means jobs).  But you should never say demand without also saying supply.  It’s the interaction of the two that yields prices.  Denver, for example, has added more than 149,000 new dwelling units… Read more

But a Ways to Go to Get There James Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal once again has written about upcoming speed bumps in the road to recovery in the housing debacle.  (see below following this commentary). As the housing bubble commences the final–albeit still… Read more

Per NAR Existing Home Sales Up 7 Percent Year-Over-Year in February But Down Sequentially Almost 1 Percent From January — Median Price Down 1.8 Percent Year-Over-Year — Supply Up to 8.6 Months from 7.8 Months in January February Existing-Home Sales Ease with Mixed Conditions Around the… Read more