Market Trends and Condition

Do you watch and understand what is happening in your RE market? This is what is happening in Maricopa County (Arizona, Phoenix area). Do some research, and post what is happening in your market.

These stats are comparing one year, from April 2009 through April 2010.

New Listings 2009 11,176
2010 13,918

Active listings 2009 47,634
2010 42,737

Sold listings 2009 8,480
2010 9,293

Sold price 2009 $158,693
2010 $171,069

DOM 2009 85
2010 74

Sold volume 2009 $1,345,720,346
2010 $1,589,750,869

You may have heard that the market conditions in Greece and in other countries in Europe have gotten worse. They have downgraded the value of the counties. This downgrade is a showing of how the countries can repay their loans which include the stocks and bonds. This plays directly on how the country’s economy will do.

Many have said that this will not flow to our country and others are doing everything they can to make sure that it does not happen.

In these cities, the housing crisis is expected to worsen.

Since the late 1970s casino-rich Atlantic City, N.J., has been a beachfront escape for poker aficionados and Keno-loving retirees from Philadelphia, Northern New Jersey and New York.

Today, buying a home in Atlantic City is a gamble. Of 315 cities measured by Local Market Monitor, a Cary, N.C.-based real estate research firm, the Atlantic City metro is expected to experience the largest drop in home value over the next 12 months. A pocket of Northwestern cities where restrictions on building have artificially inflated prices, and smaller metros whose housing markets have benefited from internal migration, join Atlantic City on our list of real estate trouble spots.

Real estate agents are working seven days a week, builders are staying open late and homebuyers are scrambling to get their offers in as they rush to take advantage of tax credits that expire at midnight Friday.

To qualify, buyers must have a signed contract in hand by the deadline and must complete the deal by June 30.

The tax incentives — offered to both first-time buyers and some current homeowners — are fueling a strong spring selling season and helping home prices stabilize. Real estate agents hope the burst in activity, along with the lifting of general economic gloom, will propel the housing market for the rest of the year.

I've also been hearing this from investors in my REIC.
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The economy is improving, with home sales up, jobless claims down and inflation tame. Yet there are concerns the economic rebound won't get much juice from the housing market, which is being fueled by government tax breaks.

Sales of previously occupied homes grew by nearly 7 percent last month, more than expected, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. It was a welcome sign after three months of declines, and a solid kickoff to what's expected to be a strong spring selling season.

Emerging Fraud Trends: Short Payoff Fraud
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Given increased defaults and declining property values in certain locations, the mortgage industry is experiencing an increase in short payoffs, sometimes called short sales. In fact, over the last two years, short payoff volume at Freddie Mac has grown more than 1,000 percent (2007-2009). This upward trend in volume leaves the market ripe for incidences of short payoff fraud.

What is a short payoff?

Economic indicators in these metros have gone from bad to worse, with no sign of recovery.

Miami boasts a popular South Beach club scene, Art Deco Architecture, and perhaps the best Cuban food in the country. But residents don't have much else to celebrate.

More than three years after the economy started its downward slide, the Miami metro area, like a handful of Sun Belt cities, still hasn't begun to recover. Median home prices in Miami have fallen 38% since its market peaked in the second quarter of 2007; the city's 11% unemployment rate is above the national average and has grown more than most of the 40 cities we surveyed.

Well, we knew it had to happen and it looks like it's starting...

A record number of U.S. homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three months of this year, a sign banks are starting to wade through the backlog of troubled home loans at a faster pace, according to a new report.

RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday that the number of U.S. homes taken over by banks jumped 35 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. In addition, households facing foreclosure grew 16 percent in the same period and 7 percent from the last three months of 2009.

More homes were taken over by banks and scheduled for a foreclosure sale than in any quarter going back to at least January 2005, when RealtyTrac began reporting the data, the firm said.

The cities that saw the bubble housing boom in the first decade of the century—cities in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona especially—won’t see the next big boom until around 2025 according to the financial services company, Fiserv. Fiserv expects other markets in the Northeast and Midwest to take a full ten years before price spikes equivalent to 2006 and 2007 return.

For most of the country some level of normalcy will prevail starting in 2011, but the recovery period will be prolonged almost everywhere in the U.S. Factors that will keep housing cycles from a more historic 10 year pattern are the continuing high levels of unemployment and the large inventory of foreclosures.

I was navigating around on a web site popular with real estate agents yesterday and found that they had a top 10 list from Forbes listing its choices for the ten residential real estate markets in greatest decline based on falling property values in 2009 and other economic factors.

They used six metrics: median home price declines from their peak, numbers of new homes being built, population flows, per capital GDP, and unemployment.

The result was:

1. Miami, FL (building permits down 77 percent)

2. Tampa, FL (median home price down 32 percent)

3. Riverside, CA (unemployment up 178 percent)

4. Jacksonville, FL (median home price down 23 percent)

5. Phoenix, AZ (building permits down 83 percent)