Survey: More buyers interested in foreclosed homes
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, Real Estate, Texas News
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
With home foreclosures soaring in most parts of the country, the number of interested buyers of these properties is growing.
More than half – 55 percent - of Americans quizzed for a new survey said they would consider purchasing a previously foreclosed house. That’s up significantly in the last
few months, according to the survey which was done by Harris Interactive.
The survey of almost 2,400 consumers was done in early May for Internet real estate firms Trulia.com and RealtyTrac.
Survey shows Dallas-area home prices gained nearly 2%
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, North Dallas Cities, Texas News
Most Texas home markets continued to eke out tiny increases in home prices in early 2009, according to a new report by First American CoreLogic.
Texas home prices were up by just less than 2 percent in the California-based housing analystÂ’s latest survey released Monday.
While Texas prices rose, nationwide home prices in January fell by 11.6 percent compared to a year ago to the lowest level in almost five years.
Dallas County commercial property sales hit a low in 2008
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, Texas News
As usual, you can blame the credit crunch.
Commercial property sales in the Dallas area fell to the lowest level on record in 2008 as investors were cut off from loans and the worsening economy took its toll.
In Dallas County, only 1,434 commercial properties changed hands last year, a 32 percent drop from 2007 sales, according to statistics from Addison-based Roddy Information Services.
US existing home sales fall 5.3 percent in January
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US existing home sales fell 5.3 percent in January as potential buyers waited to see the impact of the government’s economic stimulus package, a real estate industry group said Wednesday.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said sales fell to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.49 million units, from a level of 4.74 million units in December, amid the severe and prolonged slump in the real estate sector.
The decline confounded analysts’ consensus forecast of a rise for a second straight month, after December sales unexpectedly rose on the back of plunging home prices and soaring foreclosures.
Dallas-area home prices a mixed bag in fourth quarter
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, North Dallas Cities, Texas News
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
Feb 25, 2009
So whom do you believe?
Dallas-area home prices were down 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 from a year earlier, according to the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.
But just minutes after Case-Shiller disclosed its estimates for the area Tuesday morning, home market analysts at the Federal Housing Finance Agency said prices in the Dallas area were up 1.86 percent in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago.
Two weeks ago, another closely watched report from the National Association of Realtors said area home prices were down 4.8 percent percent in the fourth quarter.
Mixed signals on prices
by Brendan Case
Prices rose 0.3 percent in January compared to December, the Labor Department said today. That was the largest monthly increase since July, driven by energy prices. But during the 12 months ending in January, prices didn’t rise at all - the first time that’s happened since 1955.
Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.2 percent in January compared to December. Core inflation rose 1.7 percent in the 12 months ending in January.
Dallas-area homes have become more affordable
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, North Dallas Cities, Texas News
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
Falling home prices and mortgage rates have made Dallas-Fort Worth even more affordable for residential buyers.
At the end of 2008, more than 67 percent of the homes sold in the D-FW area were affordable for residents earning the area’s median family income, according to a new report by the National Association of Home Builders.
That’s the D-FW area’s highest affordability ranking in four years.
Obama Unveils Plan to Stem Foreclosures
President Barack Obama rolled out a bold $75 billion, three-part plan Wednesday to halt the soaring rate of mortgage foreclosures nationwide, one that seeks to encourage refinancing of homes now worth less than their mortgages and provides incentives for lenders to lower the debt load on struggling homeowners.
The Homeowner Stability Initiative, which Obama unveiled in Phoenix, seeks to address one of the triggers of the global financial crisis: the 2.3 million U.S. foreclosures last year that are protracting the housing crisis and helping to drive down home prices across the nation.
Specifically, the Obama plan seeks to provide low-cost refinancing for as many as 5 million Americans. It seeks to help delinquent or at-risk borrowers get their mortgages modified so that no more than 31 percent of their income is tied up in their mortgages. And it provides financial incentives to lenders and even a new insurance program to promote more mortgage modifications.
Like the failed efforts under the Bush administration, however, the Obama plan doesnÂ’t compel banks and other lenders to modify troubled mortgages. Instead, it provides a menu of incentives that may or may not prove sufficient.
Banks joined two prior voluntary efforts during the Bush administration _ Hope for Homeowners and the Federal Housing AdministrationÂ’s FHA Secure _ but these efforts have resulted in relatively few mortgage modifications.
Now theyÂ’ll have a stick waved at them if they donÂ’t comply with the subsidy plan. It will come in the form of ObamaÂ’s support for legislation pending in Congress that would allow bankruptcy court judges to modify the terms of a mortgage.
That’s forbidden right now, and banks and other lending institutions fiercely oppose what they call “cram down” legislation, warning that it’ll bring uncertainty for lenders, who will respond by restricting mortgage lending.
Banks may soon have to choose between the lesser of two evils. They could either modify loans - with a subsidy - to provide lower lending rates, and lose what they might have made from the higher lending rate over the life of the loan. Or they can do nothing and run the risk that a homeowner could file for bankruptcy and then have a judge order new loan terms that allow the borrower to stay in the home - and pay the lender less money.
The presidentÂ’s plan also offers payments to mortgage servicers, who collect mortgage payments on behalf of investors who own the mortgages originally issued by banks but were sold into a secondary market. Servicers apparently would be offered a payment for modification on par with what they would collect in the case of foreclosure.
Study finds Dallas-Fort Worth home prices up 2%
Filed under: Dallas County, Dallas News, Economy, North Dallas Cities, Texas News
By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
What home price decline?
Most recent studies show home prices in Dallas-Fort Worth decreased slightly last year, but a new report disagrees.
First American CoreLogic Inc. says in its latest study that home prices in the D-FW area were up almost 2 percent at the end of 2008 compared with a year earlier.
Nationwide prices were down 11.1 percent, according to the same report.
The study released Wednesday runs counter to others that say median home sales prices fell here in 2008.
U.S. existing home sales rise 6.5% in December
WASHINGTON – A real estate group says sales of existing homes rose 6.5 percent from November to December, closing out the worst year for the U.S. real estate market in more than a decade.
The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of existing homes rose to an annual rate of 4.74 million in December, from a downwardly revised pace of 4.45 million in November.
December’s sales had been expected to fall to a pace of 4.4 million units. according to Thomson Reuters.
The median sales price plunged to $175,400, down 15.3 percent from $207,000 a year ago. That was the lowest price since May 2003 and the biggest year-over-year drop on records going back to 1968.
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