Absolutely not! Are you crazy?

Ok, wait, that was a little rash. It’s kind of hard to yell about something without at least offering a justification for the statement. So I’m going to offer you an analysis on turnkey prices so you can understand what is really behind the prices of these properties.

Read the full article here

“Rising home prices have already resulted in a $760 billion growth in home equity during the past year,” Yun said. “Given that each percentage point of price appreciation translates into an additional $190 billion in home equity, we could see close to a $1 trillion gain next year.”

The way that you look at a situation, issue, or problem has a great affect on the decision you make and the action you take on it.

For instance, how many people do you know see U.S. home owners gaining $1 trillion in 2013?

There are a lot of conditions that are pressuring the homes prics in the United States upward. Some of them include a decreasing supply of homes, slightly loosened (but still very tough) lending standards, and the lowest mortgage rates in history.

The outcome of this set of circumstances?

The national median existing-home price² for all housing types was $178,600 in October, which is 11.1 percent above a year ago. This marks eight consecutive monthly year-over-year increases, which last occurred from October 2005 to May 2006.

On top of that, the so called ’bargain basement’ deals on U.S. properties are long gone, and on average, they are selling at just 20% below.

If you are looking to invest in residential properties, then the time to act is NOW!

Read all the research from NAR here

There are currently 14M homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages but they have work, and are paying their mortgage down, and remain steadfast home owners.  With the current rise in home prices, a lot of people have now emerged from a negative equity position and are back in a positive equity position. That means those homeowners can now sell their homes and pay off their mortgage to the bank and look to buy a new home.

“[A] substantial number of homes are still locked up in negative equity, unable to enter the existing re-sale market despite the desires of their owner,” Zillow chief economist Dr. Stan Humphries said in a release.

On top of that, we see that the largest markets measured by Zillow are all experiencing more people moving from negative into positive equity,

The real estate data provider[Zillow] also found the 30 largest U.S. metros saw quarterly declines in negative equity.

This will lead to a much more healthy housing market.

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That’s too bad – they missed out on gains of at least 5-20% depending on where you purchased. And that is only the appreciation!

As Lawrence Yun points out,

no threatening signs for inflation in 2013, but projects it to be in the range of 4 to 6 percent by 2015. “The huge federal budget deficit is likely to push up borrowing costs and raise inflation well above 2 percent,” he said.

Here are some things to consider reading more thoroughly about regarding the above comment.

1)      There is inflationary pressure regardless of the economy being the driving factor behind it.  Debt and the inevitable need to control money supply are driving inflationary pressure

2)      What do people buy to hedge against inflation? Hard assets (things you can touch) like real estate.

It is not surprise then to hear Mr. Yun follow this comment with the following statement,

“Real estate will be a hedge against inflation, with values rising 15 percent cumulatively over the next three years, also meaning there will be fewer upside-down home owners,” Yun said. “Today is a perfect opportunity for moderate-income renters to become successful home owners, but stringent mortgage credit conditions are holding them back.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, the opportunity that exists now in the United States is humongous  but the window to take advantage of it is closing. Cut through the crap in the media, do your research, and act on it.

Your real estate riches await you.

Read the full article here

There is no sustainable way for the housing market to drive the economy because then you just have a lot of construction. and in the end, you can pay  any one to build anything regardless if someone buys the end product or not. Eventually the builder runs out of money, people loose their jobs, and &^it hits the fan.

What needs to happen is for the US economy to employ more people so they can sustainably pay a mortgage to buy a house. On top of that, (and as a side note) there has to be much better regulation of the banking industry – many people were making mortgage payments just fine before the collapse, but then banks just changed payment requirements upward by at least double and everyone was forced to leave their homes.

Why else is housing not able to sustain the economy like some people say it can? When you are building a structure, once its complete so are the jobs.  It isn’t rocket science – its common sense.

Despite the slightly misguided title of this article, there is much to be learned about the status quo and dance pair of the US economy and US housing market.

Full story can be found here

Some of the biggest increases were in states that suffered the worst from the housing bust. Home prices in Arizona jumped 18.7% in the past year, the most of any state. Home prices in Idaho rose 13.1%, the second largest. Nevada’s home values rose 11%.

Idaho? Really?

I know that one surprised everyone but Arizona and Nevada surely did not as many foreign investors jump into those markets to pick up rental properties and winter homes.

The recovery in home prices is so wise spread in fact, that only 18 cities of 100 metros registered a decrease in the survey by CoreLogic and this September registered a 5% increase across all homes in the nation – the fastest since 2006.

The recovery has now been sustained long enough for even the Case Shiller index to catch up.

Read all of the key points here provided by CoreLogic

Looking at new construction starts, existing home sales and the foreclosure plus delinquency rate, the housing market is now 43% back to normal — a new post-crisis high! 

That is convincing news but only if you review the context and the factors that are measured inside of this indexing tool.  Buried inside are good measurements such as construction starts that are up 35% Y-o-Y and bad news that existing home sales slipped slightly and delinquency foreclosure rates unexpectedly jumped.

The saving grace though is that there is more good than bad and we are heading in the right direction.

Full explanation here

According to Mr. Buffet, there is reason to be bullish on the housing market (and we agree) because of mortgage rates that continue to fall to new lows, and an economy that is growing albeit, at the pace of sand through an hour glass.

Berkshire Hathaway has actually become partners with Brookfield via a new venture called Berkshire’s HomeServices of America.

Brookfield will contribute a network of more than 53,000 individual estate agents responsible for $72 billion (Dh264 billion) of residential real estate sales last year

So on top of becoming the nations 2^nd largest full service residential brokerage firm in the United States, Buffett has also been busy acquiring complementary business to the housing market,

Berkshire has also acquired a brickmaker and agreed to pay $1.5 billion for a portfolio of home loans from Residential Capital, the bankrupt mortgage lender.

Funnily enough, new home construction surged 15% to an annual pace of 872,000 units.

Think Buffet is onto something? Perhaps.

Read on

If we look at the huge market that we call the United States, some markets are doing very well such as Miami or Orlando or Phoenix, but other places like St. Louis and Atlanta as mentioned in the Zillow article, are still tanking.  By the same token, the good news is that more and more places across the United States continue to be added to the list of growing markets.

Zillow’s third quarter Real Estate Market Reports, released today, show home values increased 1.3% from the second to the third quarter of 2012 to $153,800. On an annual basis, the Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) rose 3.2% from September 2011 levels

And more importantly,

September also marks the eleventh consecutive month of home value appreciation, with this month showing 0.8 percent growth

So we have more cities that are experiencing home price growth and for much more sustained growth.  Decreasing foreclosures are on the market now because investors are picking up A LOT of the lower priced housing units across the country.

Read here for a complete picture of the uneven recovery.

What Wisconsin does represent is a sort of average of all the American states that blend in the background – which is all of them with the exception of New York, Florida, California, and Texas.

The plight of Wisconsin is that it does not look like it has improving economics or employment in the next 6 to 12 months but – they are much better off than most of the other states in the union.

Their unemployment rate is at 7.3% which is a full percentage point lower than the national average, and the jobs they are adding are actually in the manufacturing base which are high paying paying jobs, not low paying service jobs. Any wonder why their housing market held up so well?

The economics support it.  Don’t be skewed by the information in just one article.

Read the source article here