The National Association of Realtors' January 2012 existing home sales statistics show an annualized 4.3% monthly increase in total existing homes sales from December. Annualized gives what the yearly level and rate would be if the current month's rate was applied to an entire year. The change in existing home sales from this time last year was 0.7%.
The National Association of Realtors revised existing home sales for for 2007-2010. 2010 was revised downward by 14.6% as well as the entire three year period, 2007-2010 was also revised down by 14.3%. 2010 existing home sales benchmark revisions are now 4,190,000. Previously the NAR claimed 4,908,000 sales.
At the end of June nearly 1/4 of all homeowners with mortgages owed more on their homes than the home was worth.
Some 24% of owner-occupied homes had mortgage debt that exceeded the values of those homes at the end of June, according to data from Equifax and Moody’s Economy.com. That number rises to 32% when looking at the share of homeowners with mortgages that don’t have equity left in their homes.
Overall, 16 million homeowners are “upside-down” on their mortgages, up from 10 million, or 15% of owner-occupied homes, one year ago.
Looks like history could be repeating itself. Now we've known for some time that the Chinese were getting weary about buying and holding US-Dollar demominated government securities. They've been pairing back from the longer dated maturity paper to shorter ones.
Slowly but surely, they want to move away from American debt. All that money we've been shoveling their way, a byproduct to our trade imbalance, has gone into things showing their diversification plan, from farm lands in Africa to purchasing major steaks in mining firms to buying precious metals and oil. Now it seems, according to one Li Liangzhong, want to extend into further real estate purchases in the US.
paragraph vi. Second Liens: While eligibly loan modifications will not require any participation by second lien holders, the program will include additional incentives to extinguish second liens on loans modified under the program in order to reduce the overall indebtedness of the borrower and improve loan performance. Servicers will be eligible to receive compensation when they contact second lien holders and extinguish valid junior liens. Servicers will be reimbursed for the release according to the specified schedule, and will also receive an extra $250 for obtaining a release of a valid second lien.
All you have to do is click on any news aggregrator to see the new median home price for resales is $181,300 and new homes, median price is $220,400. Still not really affordable for your average U.S. median income, but a huge improvement.
That said, Bloomberg has the real story on this latest report. The rate at which prices are falling is a steep, steep decline. In fact, it's freefall.
Sales of single-family houses in the U.S. dropped in November by the most in two decades and resale prices collapsed at a pace reminiscent of the Great Depression, dashing speculation the market was close to a bottom.
Home prices surged in 2003 through 2006, climbing by a cumulative 52%, according to Case-Shiller. Since then, however, the housing and credit bubbles have burst and homeowners have given up half of their gains from earlier in the decade
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