Real Estate Information Archive

If we were to survey the landscape to see if people rate the decline in housing prices as either a curse or a blessing, we are sure most would say curse. After all, most homeowners have suffered a loss of equity over the past five years.

However, there is an upside to the decline in home prices, particularly for first-time homebuyers and owners looking to trade up, and that's affordability. According to financial data provider Fiserv, the monthly mortgage payment for a median-priced single-family home is 40 percent cheaper than it was five years ago, falling to $700 from $1,140.

Lower prices are really the only way to remedy a supply glut. Watching an asset's price fall is unpleasant, to be sure, but prices fall only so far and the glut clears, and then prices generally rise.

For example, Miami was one of the most overbuilt metropolitan regions and suffered serious price deflation. But the glut in Miami appears to have cleared, thanks to lower prices stimulating more demand. In the third quarter of 2011, Miami home sales jumped 51 percent from a year ago. What's more, prices are again on the rise: the average sales price in Miami for a single-family home has risen 19 percent year-over-year.

It is more informative to focus on local numbers than it is to focus on national numbers. The National Association of Realtors reports that the national median single-family home price slipped 4.7 percent year-over-year to $169,500 in the third quarter. That said, the NAR's national median price really doesn't mean much to any specific local market.

The bottom line for us is that we've seen enough evidence of markets clearing to suggest more markets will resemble Miami in 2012. Fiserv, though expecting some price weakness over the next few months, expects most major markets to post significant price gains in the second half of 2012.

What will financing rates look like in 2012? We thought mortgage rates would be higher this year than in 2010; that hasn't been the case. The Federal Reserve has plainly stated that it is buying long-term securities in order to hold long-term borrowing rates low. It can be silly to fight the Fed.

Then again, markets can be potent forces. Consider this past week: news that another Mediterranean country, Italy , is close to insolvency did little to move interest rates or mortgage rates. In other words, investors weren't rushing into U.S. Treasury securities. In fact, Treasury rates and mortgage rates held steady for the week.

When the Greek crisis occurred, Treasury rates and mortgage rates dropped perceptibly. The fact mortgage rates hardly moved with the latest crisis suggests markets might be less willing to accept ultra-low rates in exchange for a haven from risk.

Courtesy of Jessica Regan.

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Homebuilders remain in a state of suspended negative animation, and most of them believe their situation is unlikely to improve any time soon. The homebuilders’ sentiment index posted at 14 for September. It has ranged between 13 and 17 for the past year. Fifty is the split between optimism and pessimism, so there is a long way to go before sentiment changes.

At least the decline in housing starts appears to be moderating. Starts posted at an annual rate of 571,000 units in August, a 5-percent drop from July's numbers. Many media outlets blamed weather – Hurricane Irene in the Northwest and South – for the decline. The good news is that permits for future construction were up 3.2 percent, suggesting a slight improvement for starts in September and possibly beyond.In contrast, existing-home sales showed significant improvement, surging 7.7 percent to an annual rate of 5.03 million units in August. The burst in sales drew supply down by 3 percent to 3.577 million units, dropping supply to 8.5 months from 9.5 months in July.

It appears some additional discounting and bargain hunting among investors was occurring in the existing-home market. The median sales price fell 1.7 percent to $168,300 in August, while the average price slumped 1.6 percent to $216,800. Investors accounted for 22 percent of sales, up from 18 percent in July. This suggests to us that foreclosed properties are being absorbed and taken off the market.Despite the August decline in median and average existing-home prices, we remain convinced the worst is over, though our optimism remains tempered. We are not expecting a surge in home prices any time soon; then again, neither are most housing experts. MacroMarkets surveyed 111 experts and the consensus is for prices to grow at a 1.1-percent annual rate through 2015. It's not a growth rate to get excited over, to be sure; then again, it's not a negative growth rate either.

We are also not expecting a surge in mortgage rates. In fact, rates continue to set new multi-decade lows. As you may have heard, the Federal Reserved announced it will start buying longer-term US Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. The goal is for the Fed to purchase $400 billion worth of securities with maturities between 6 and 30 years by June 2012 in order to further lower long-term borrowing rates.This means low mortgage rates will be with us for a while. The 30-year fixed-rated mortgage is usually priced two to two-and-half percentage points above the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. The yield on that security tumbled to a mere 1.75 percent on Wednesday. Some 30-year mortgage loans are already being quoted below 4 percent.

When transactions are your livelihood, it can be difficult to muster a smile when there are fewer of them. There were fewer transactions in existing-home sales, which fell 3.8 percent to a 4.8 million annualized rate in May. Supply on the market, at 3.72 million units, is falling, but not enough relative to the sales pace, as inventory rose to 9.3 months versus April's 9.0 months.

Price stabilization was the positive takeaway, with the median sales price rising to $166,500. Another plus is that sales of single-family homes, the central component in the report, fell at a slower rate at 3.2 percent. Floods and tornado-ravaging storms in the Midwest were mitigating factors. Blaming the weather is often the easy way out, but this time it appears valid.

Sales of new houses also fell for the first time in three months, by 2.1 percent to a 319,000-unit annualized pace in May, showing that the industry continues to struggle to gain momentum. The good news is that prices continue to rise, with the median price inching up to $222,600 from $217,000 in April, while inventory continues to fall, with supply dipping to 6.2 months from 6.3 months.

Sales are down, but prices are up, which suggests to us that the days of simply giving away homes are over (even with the putative 1.8 million homes in shadow inventory). MacroMarkets, an economic data compiler, surveyed real estate experts on home-price trends. The consensus estimate was for an average annual growth rate of 2 percent, which MacroMarkets co-founder Robert Shiller opined “will not inspire a lot of consumer confidence.”

We disagree, because price growth isn't price contraction. Two percent average-annual growth on a $200,000 home means the home is worth more than $220,000 after five years. What's more, home equity will grow as the mortgage is amortized. Five years is a long time, and no one can know with certainty what the average annual rate of appreciation will be. Given the low price of homes today, though, we would not be surprised to see homes appreciate at a rate greater than 2 percent annually.

Now, we would like to see mortgage rates start to rise. Without artificial support from the Federal Reserve, interest rates would naturally move higher. That's not bad; the market needs to get back to equilibrium – with more private mortgage money and private mortgage-backed securities, so we can have more choices and more lending alternatives. A rising-rate environment also implies that there are other positive things happening in the economy.

Mortgage rates continue to hold historical lows. Low rates coupled with stable-to-rising prices in many parts of the country point to a near-perfect storm of a market for buying residential or investment real estate.