Categories: Housing Prices

Where Home Prices Are Suddenly Hot

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on November 10

The real estate market continues to send mixed signals. Home sales are rising. They were up 11% in the third quarter from the same period last year to a...

Q & A on New Home Buyer Tax Credit

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on November 06

The National Association of Realtors Web site has a nice Question & Answer section about the new credit The Realtors' spokesman tells me that the new credit will start tomorrow,...

Expanded Home Buyer Tax Credit to Cost $10.8 Billion

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 29

Majority Leader Harry Reid's office just sent me an outline of the Senate Democrats' plan to extend and expand the home buyer tax credit. Much of this was covered in...

Home Buyer Tax Credit Could Soon Be Extended, Expanded

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 28

It's increasingly likely that Congress will extend and expand the popular home buyer tax credit, which will expire next month. CNN.com reported today that a compromise proposal based on bills...

Home Prices Rise Again ... But Don't Get Used to It

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 27

Home prices rose 1% in August from the seasonally-adjusted July level -- the third month in a row of increases, according to S&P/Case Shiller home price index. The 20-city index...

Houses You Can Buy For Practically Nothing

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 14

The real estate industry is justifiably worried about what will happen to home sales if the $8,000 credit for new home buyers is allowed to expire on Dec. 1....

Could Home Prices See A Double-Dip?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 13

Home price numbers have ended their free-fall, but a lot housing experts are still concerned about a possible double-dip. Integrated Asset Services, which tracks troubled properties, says its House...

Big Changes in Southern California Home Sales

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 16

For months the big story was how fast California home sales were rebounding as investors snapped up cheap, foreclosed homes. Now the sales and price trends are reversing. In August...

Homebuying Season Could Extend into the Fall

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on September 11

The spring buying season was a little longer than usual this year. Home sales gathered strength as the summer progressed. Pending home sales, for example, jumped 3.2% in July from...

Cleveland's Housing Rebound

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 12

Cleveland popped up recently as the U.S. city with the largest increase (4.1%) in home sale prices among the twenty big cities followed in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index....

What If the Housing Bubble Never Happened?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 11

Slow and steady housing markets now seem to be in better shape than markets that boomed and busted such as Florida and California. But does that mean that homeowners in...

US Home Prices Show Quarterly Growth

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 06

Another sign that the housing market is improving. Clear Capital, which provides real estate valuation data for investors, said today that U.S. home prices jumped 5% in the quarter ending...

Greenspan: Housing Market Bottom Yet To Come

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 04

Today I wrote that pending home sales hit a two-year high in June -- seemingly another indication that the housing market has hit bottom. But former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan...

The End of the Housing Bust?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 29

I’m reading with some glee all the national coverage of the end of the housing bust. “Home Prices Rise Across the U.S.” says the front page of the Wall Street...

Housing Prices and Behavioral Economics

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 17

In traditional finance text books, assets are always priced perfectly by the cool, rational work of markets. In the real world, human behavior has a huge influence on what...

Case-Shiller Home Prices Decline Only 18%

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 30

The latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller housing index numbers out today show the market falling less dramatically than it had been earlier in the year. The 10 and 20 city indices...

Forecast: New York metro home prices will drop another 40%

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on June 18

Home prices in the New York metro area, including Westchester County and northern New Jersey suburbs, could fall 40% from March levels, according to Deutsche Bank analysts. Quoting the report,...

Home Prices In Southern California Up for the First Time Since 2007!

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 17

Southern California home sales rose for the 11th consecutive month in May. Even more significant: The median price increased slightly from the prior month for the first time since July...

Will Higher Interest Rates Slow the Housing Rebound?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 12

Real estate exec Jamie LeFrak disagreed with my blog item earlier this week that declared home prices had hit bottom. His argument? The recent uptick in sales is a...

Only one U.S. home market is now extremely overvalued: Atlantic City

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on June 04

Atlantic City, N.J. is the only large U.S. housing market that is extremely overvalued, according to IHS Global Insight's first quarter 2009 "Housing Prices in America" report. By comparison, the...

It took only three years to wipe away six years of boomtime home-price gains

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 26

Home prices fell 19.1% in the first quarter compared to the previous year, the largest decline in the 21-year history of Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index series. Case-Shiller's...

How much is prestige worth in this new age of frugality?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 22

Luxury consumption -- even for those who can still afford it -- is falling out of fashion. Some wealthy Americans are cutting back, not out of necessity, but because it...

Are prisons good for home prices? Maybe in one Maryland metro where prices jumped 21%.

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 15

Home prices in the Cumberland, Md. metro area, which have been rising steadily for years, shot up a startling 21% in the first quarter compared to the same period a...

Foreclosure sales drive down home prices

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 12

Here's the latest from the National Association of Realtors: A total of 134 out of 152 metropolitan statistical areas reported lower median existing single-family home prices in comparison with the...

Jobs and Housing Prices

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 12

How closely related are job losses and housing prices? Very close, according to Integrated Asset Services, a mortgage consulting firm which found a direct correlation between home prices and initial...

Tata's Nano Home: Company behind world's cheapest car to sell $7,800 apartments

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 07

Tata, the Indian company that made worldwide headlines with its $2,000 Nano car, now plans to build 1,000 tiny apartments outside Mumbai that will sell for $7,800 to $13,400 each....

California home prices rise for first time since Aug. 2007

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on April 28

I wrote a story last week saying that the California Association of Realtors were readying to announce the first monthly home price rise in two years (one of a handful...

Questioning a rise in the FHFA house price index

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 22

Here's what Michelle Meyer of Barclays Capital Research has to say about today's surprising rise in the home price index of the Federal Housing Finance Administration (successor to OFHEO). The...

In Oakland, Las Vegas, and elsewhere, the monthly cost of homeownership has plummeted

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 14

Imagine this: In Oakland, Calif., the cost of homeownership relative to income has fallen 67% from its July 2007 peak. The ratio has fallen 59% in Sacramento and Las Vegas,...

House Prices Back to 2002

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 14

In another indication this is turning out to be the real estate industry's lost decade, home prices in some top markets such as Boston and suburban San Francisco have dropped...

Asking prices for homes in large metros rose in March, according to one index.

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on April 13

Altos Research's latest 10-city composite index of asking prices showed a 1.1% increase in March. This isn't bad news, but it's not great news either. The reason that prices increased...

Manhattan Condo Sales Crash

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 02

More evidence all the layoffs on Wall Street are begining to hit the Manhattan condo market. According to a new report out today from broker the Corcoran Group and...

What direction are home prices going? Depends on which index you trust.

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on March 31

Are home prices recovering or are they falling faster than ever? It all depends on which closely-watched index you believe. The Case Shiller index of home prices in 20 major...

More Good Housing News

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 25

New-home sales nationally jumped 4.7% in February, the first month-to-month jump since July, according to the Commerce Dept. Many home builders have lowered their prices or just built smaller homes...

A steep reduction in Wall Street bonuses could force Manhattan home prices down another 24%

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on March 24

Oshrat Carmiel, a reporter for Bloomberg and a good friend of mine, wrote an interesting story last week about the potentially devastating impact that the the expected reduction in Wall...

Existing Home Sales Up

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 23

The stock market jumped today as home sales as more homes got sold than expected in February. The National Association of Realtors reports that sales of existing homes—including condos--rose...

Why Home Prices Fall More in Low-Priced Neighborhoods

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 19

A couple of days ago I published stats on the Southern California housing market. An exec with research provider MDA DataQuick noted that median home price numbers are skewed because...

How much value do real estate brokers add? Not much.

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 16

Fascinating study by Stanford University economists B. Douglas Bernheim and Jonathan Meer called "How Much Value Do Real Estate Brokers Add? A Case Study." Bottom line: They don't add a...

What does a $6,000 home in Detroit look like?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on March 05

The median home in Detroit fell 39% to $7,000 in January compared to a year earlier. Yes, it’s cheaper now to buy a house in the Motor City than it...

In California, Prices on Foreclosed Homes May Be Firming

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 26

BusinessWeek's Mara Der Hovanesian reports today on what passes for good news in the housing market. She's attending JPMorgan Chase's annual investor conference in New York. Charlie Scharf, head of...

Home Prices Post Record Decline

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 24

The latest S&P/Case-Shiller home price index data came out today and the numbers are grim. Data through December 2008 show that prices of existing single family homes across the United...

Homewners No Longer in Denial about Home Prices

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 12

A new survey from Web site Zillow.com says more than half (57%) of home owners now say that their home lost value in the past year. This is much...

Home Prices Fall Even in Wealthy Zip Codes

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 05

New numbers provided us by online real estate agent ZipRealty.com shows that the housing slump is begining to pinch prices even in the nation's wealthiest zip codes. In Atherton,...

Are home prices leveling off in the worst-hit housing markets?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on January 27

My story today on the latest S&P Case-Shiller 20-city home price index suggests that year-over-year home price drops in Miami, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, and other battered markets were...

Manhattan Real Estate Sales Plunge

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 06

Manhattan real estate sales plunged more than 40% in the fourth quarter to 2,500 units, accoding to the latest survey from the Corcoran Group brokerage firm. Median sales prices...

Home prices are back to March 2004 levels. Where were you then?

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 30

Where were you in March 2004? Because that's the last time home prices were as low as they are now, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home...

The Moment We've All Been Waiting For

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 19

An article from the January edition of Reason Magazine caught my eye the other day. It shows just how far out of whack home prices had gotten. Editor Tim Cavanaugh...

Record Home Price Slide in Southern California

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 16

Ah, remember when Southern California stood for sunshine, the Beach Boys and eternally rising housing prices? No more. According to research firm MDA DataQuick, the median home price fell...

Housing's Worst Year Ever

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 15

The real estate Web site Zillow.com reports today that American home values fell by $2 trillion in 2008. “This year marked the acceleration of the market correction, and is likely...

Did Home Prices Hit a Lifetime Peak?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on December 12

The lead story in USA Today suggests we may never again see housing prices as high as they were two years ago. That may be an overstatement. Here's the newspaper's...

Latest Case-Shiller Numbers Show Steep Slide

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on November 25

The S&P/Case-Sheller index came out today and the news is not very good. In the national index, prices were down 16% from the third quarter 2007 to the same period...

If the home builders are nervous, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on November 19

The builders are about as pessimistic as they've ever been. Yesterday, we learned that the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which tracks builder sentiment, fell to...

Boston and Cleveland home prices were on the rise in August, according to Case Shiller report.

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 28

It seems that the most-damaged housing markets – such as Phoenix, Miami, San Diego, and Las Vegas – only got worse in August, according to the S&P/Case Shiller home value...

What California Realtors say about Housing Prices

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 22

California home sales are soaring. What? Aren’t we in the middle of a credit crunch and mortgage industry meltdown? Bargain shoppers are snapping up distressed property, according to real...

Stock market crash kills luxury home sales

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 13

The collapse of the subprime lending market killed the low-priced end of the housing market. Now the ruination on Wall Street threatens to kill the top of the market....

Manhattan apartment prices are finally going flat

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 07

Manhattan apartment prices, which have soared quarter after quarter, are finally flattening out, according to a report today from the Real Estate Board of New York. “The trend from the...

Manhattan Takes a Tumble

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 03

The latest real estate sales numbers from the Corcoran Report show that the Big Apple, long thought to be immune from the housing slump, suddenly has that sinking feeling. Home...

Whose Home Prices Numbers do you Believe?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 30

The battle of the home price databases continues. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index out this morning shows a record 16.3% price drop in July from the year-ago period. That was...

What Does the Bailout Mean for Homeowners?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 25

You have to love those New Yorker cartoons. The kid breaks open his piggy bank and says "Now we just have to sit back and wait for the Fed...

Hurricane Ike's devastation might not extend to Houston's housing market

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on September 17

Before Hurricane Ike swept through the Gulf Coast on Saturday, the Houston area’s real estate market was one of the strongest in the country. Home prices were up about 1...

Putting the real estate slump in perspective

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 28

Unlike previous housing slumps, the one we're in now has spread from coast to coast. But that doesn't mean that every market is suffering equally. The worst markets -- the...

The good and bad in the latest housing report

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 25

First the good news. Home sales in July jumped by 3.1%, the highest level in five months, the inventory of unsold single-family homes declined slightly, and home prices in the...

Denial is Not Just a River in Egypt

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 05

Perception vs. Reality was an ad campaign Rolling Stone magazine used to convince advertisers its readers weren’t unemployed hippies living in old VW campers but instead wealthy members of...

Latest prediction: California's housing market will hit bottom first

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on August 01

It’s easy to call a bottom to the housing slump. The tough part is getting the timing right. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has made many such predictions. "All the signs...

Manhattan co-op boards rejecting Wall Street's wealthy

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on July 15

Buying a co-op in Manhattan is ridiculously expensive but still affordable for Wall Street employees whose large salaries and bonuses allow them to live a comfortable New York life. But...

When is it OK to walk away from your mortgage?

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 30

Check out this week's BusinessWeek cover story, The Home Price Abyss: Why the threat of a free fall is growing. I and Mara Der Hovanesian wrote the story with help...

Harvard on Housing

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 24

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies came out with its annual snapshot of the housing industry this week and it is bleak. The report, the university’s 20th, calls...

Case-Shiller index makes the bottom of the housing market look more distant

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 27

S&P/Case-Shiller first quarter home price indexes released May 27 should be a reality check for anybody still arguing that the real estate market is bottoming out. The national index showed...

Home prices down and unsold listings way up

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 23

The big news in the April existing home price report released today by the National Association of Realtors wasn’t the 8% drop in median home prices or the better-than-expected 1%...

Your house is so underwater you need a submarine to get in the front door

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 06

You bought at the peak of the market. You put next to nothing down. (Maybe you even took out one of those 105% LTV loans to cover closing costs.)...

Is the National Media being too Harsh?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 06

I came upon this little summary of recent housing data from Realty Times columnist Kenneth R. Harney yesterday. He argues that although recent the data still shows declining sales nationwide,...

KB Home co-founder says home prices could fall 20% more

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 29

Eli Broad, the co-founder of KB Home, told Bloomberg TV yesterday that home prices could fall another 20%. Here's a link to the story. That is an absolutely enormous...

Gas Prices and Home Values

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 16

Gas prices hit a new high today of $3.40 a gallon. In some markets they are already over $4. It seems the pain at the pump is even spilling over...

Housing cycles: lessons learned

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 03

Take a few minutes to watch a pretty baby-blue house that's for sale ask a wise old bespectacled brown house for advice. It's in this instructional cartoon by John...

The poor get poorer

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 02

Isn't it always the way? In most parts of the country, folks at the bottom are seeing the biggest declines in home prices, according to a new analysis by Zillow.com....

A housing economist who doesn't want the Fed to cut

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 25

Econ 101 says lower interest rates are good for the housing market. But the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, worries there could be too...

DC real estate rebounding?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on March 10

Average home prices in Washington D.C. and nearby suburbs are on the rise, according to data from the Center for Regional Analysis at the George Mason University School of...

Home sales could be improving in a handful of major cities

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on March 03

The housing slump is deepening, spreading and showing little sign of letting up. But home sale transactions in December picked up a bit in Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Sacramento and San...

D.R. Horton's UnAuction--up to 50% off

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 14

Remember when they said housing is a safe investment because prices never go down? Builders fell for their own sales pitch. Now they're paying the price, big time. This...

London Falling?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 07

It used to be called Millionaire's Row, now it's Billionaire's. It's the London street, Bishops Avenue, where Kazakhstani billionaire Horelma Peramam purchased a new home for $100 million last...

Housing Meltdown: Why home prices could drop 25% more on average before the market finally hits bottom

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 31

Please check out this week's cover story in BusinessWeek and let me know whether you agree or disagree with it. I just finished it yesterday, but there are already...

A Jumbo Problem in California

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 30

California's once hot market continues to cool. The state's association of Realtors reports that home sales were down 33% in December. Median homes prices fell a surprising 16% to $475,000....

Happy New Year!

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 28

Happy, that is, if you're a renter who's looking to buy. Evidence is mounting that prices will continue to fall substantially in 2008. Think of it this way: When...

Schussing the black diamond: home prices go straight down

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 26

To a skier, schussing a black diamond means going straight down a very steep trail. Which pretty much describes what's happening to the housing market--and not just in ski...

"Dizzying" home prices in China

Posted by: Peter Coy on December 17

You may have heard that a housing bubble is popping in China. Not so, says China Daily. The newspaper says that prices are still rising briskly--and that's not a good...

Presidential hopefuls living large

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on December 13

The candidates like to talk about everyday Americans, but as a new Newsweek article makes clear, nothing is average about the way they live. In addition to his ski lodge...

Double-digit price drops in some metro areas

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on November 30

New York's slightly up. Los Angeles is down. And home sellers across the country have little to cheer about. Of the 25 metropolitan areas included in the new "RPX Monthly...

Paper Economy says it can tell what your house is worth. Roughly.

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 28

The website Paper Economy has created a tool that purports to tell you how much your house is worth. All you have to tell it is what metro area you're...

The housing bust is really a land bust

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 27

Unless you live in the countryside, where land is cheap, there's a good chance that the price of the land your house is built on is more valuable than...

Oops. This isn't the first decline in home prices

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 13

I want to take back something I wrote on Oct. 11, when I tentatively sided with those who claim this is the first time since the Great Depression that...

Cheaper homes inflated the most during the boom

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 13

In many cities, the housing boom and bust have been cruelest to the people who could least afford it. That becomes clear from analyzing data released last week by Standard...

Are home prices less 'sticky' this time around?

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 01

Home prices are notoriously sticky in a slump. "Sticky" means that they don't fall quickly even if demand drops a lot. The reasons are familiar: Sellers get fixated on what...

Home Price Cuts, They're Steeper Than You Think

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 17

Researching a story in the latest issue of the magazine on Great Places to Retire at Bargain Prices I was surprised by some of the steeps discounts that homes were...

Biggest decline since the Depression. We think.

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 11

Is this the biggest decline in housing prices since the Great Depression? People have been asserting it so often, and with such authority, that I assumed it must be...

If you're looking to buy, think about buying new

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 27

I said this on Good Morning America a couple weekends ago and I probably looked like a shill for the homebuilding industry, but let me say it again anyway: If...

Something for you Robert Shiller fans

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 24

A good interview by IndexUniverse.com with Robert Shiller, the Yale University professor and author of "Irrational Exuberance" who was one of the first economists to predict a major downturn in...

The Texas two-step

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on September 20

The latest numbers from the Houston Association of Realtors show just how bi-furcated today's housing market has become. Sales of homes in the $80,000 to $150,000 price range dropped nearly...

Tap the brakes--you're passing through a town where housing prices are falling

Posted by: Peter Coy on September 04

Hard to believe, but apparently true: You're more likely to get a speeding ticket in a town where housing prices have been falling. Cops write more tickets when their...

Real Estate Is Not All Local

Posted by: Maya Roney on August 28

Yes, home prices can fall, and they do. U.S. home prices fell 3.2% in the second quarter of 2007 from the year-ago period, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home...

Are we seeing first signs of a bottom in housing?

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 20

Calculated Risk is one of my favorite housing-related blogs, even if I don't know who really is the man behind the curtain (the anonymous author only describes himself as "a...

Home Prices Improving. Maybe.

Posted by: Maya Roney on August 15

Home prices are still seeing double-digit increases in 97 of 149 U.S. markets, according to the National Association of Realtors. But don’t get too excited, for even these numbers may...

California Sunsets

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 15

It’s one of the things that has intrigued me the most about this real estate slump, how home sales volumes can crash but prices stay up. Doesn’t this fly in...

Nostalgic for the Housing Boom? Move to Latvia

Posted by: Peter Coy on August 07

Latvia seems to be the new Las Vegas, except without the gambling and the neon, and with lots more people who play hockey and speak Latvian. Exceeding even the Vegas...

What's the Opposite of Exuberance?

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 31

"No signs of a turnaround," says Robert J. "Irrational Exuberance" Shiller in announcing the May results for his national home price survey. The S&P/Case-Shiller 10-City Index showed an annual decline...

Where Will Housing Recover First? Would You Believe D.C.?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 26

Intriguing predictions from John Burns of John Burns Real Estate Consulting: With so much doom and gloom in the market, we are going to focus on the positive this month....

NAR Says Just Wait For '08

Posted by: Maya Roney on July 11

Another NAR prediction today—will this one flop like all its predecessors? Keep your fingers crossed. The National Association of Realtors said today that it expects home prices to recover in...

Housing Hodgepodge

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 26

More bad news for the housing sector today. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index, a measure of housing prices developed by Yale prof Robert Shiller and Standard & Poors, reports a...

Attention, Homeowners: Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 21

A new survey by Boston Consulting Group finds that 55% of Americans think their home would sell for more money now than it would have a year ago. Wishful thinking....

Rich People Know Better

Posted by: Maya Roney on June 18

I’m being a bit ironic with the headline here— but a recent survey of luxury homeowners tells us that when it comes to real estate, the affluent have more realistic...

The Market Is Most Pessimistic About Las Vegas

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 05

Bespoke Investment Group has a good analysis (click here) showing that the financial markets are most pessimistic about Las Vegas home prices over the coming year, and most optimistic...

Short Story

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 27

A story in the latest issue of the magazine highlights the increasing number of homes being listed as “short sales,” i.e. they’re selling for less than what the homeowner owes...

The Toenail Factor

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 12

For Jeff Mezger, chief exec at KB home (that's him at right), one telling indicator of home prices is the differential between new homes (that's what he sells) and existing...

Pressure on Appraisers

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 12

Four appraisal organizations said today that they don't think the government is doing enough to ensure independent appraisals of property for mortgage loans. The biggest of the four, the Appraisal...

The Housing Roller Coaster

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on April 06

TV shows have been created, books written, endless columns of newspaper and magazine articles devoted to the housing bubble. Now, it's Youtube's turn. I may be late in viewing this,...

Naples, Fla., Still the Most Overvalued; Dallas and College Station-Bryan, Tex., Are the Most Undervalued

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 19

Now that you've read the headline you don't need to read the item--that about sums it up. But in case you want some details: Global Insight Inc., the Waltham (Mass.)...

Realtor.com takes on Zillow.com

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on March 12

Home pricing site Zillow.com caused a huge sensation when it started offering its Zestimates on what people's houses are worth. All the attention (and online traffic) has spurred rival Realtor.com...

Home Sellers and Scalpers

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 01

Rafi Mohammed, a pricing expert, makes this interesting analogy between home sellers and scalpers on his blog: The panic that could occur in the housing market is akin to what...

OFHEO Says House Prices Rose in Fourth Quarter--Check Out Your Own City

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 01

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight says that house prices rose 1.1% in the fourth quarter of 2006 from the third-quarter level. That put them 5.9% higher than they...

Who's hot, who's not

Posted by: Dean Foust on February 13

Zillow.com just released a new report assessing the trend in home values across the country. Granted, you could question the accuracy of Zillow’s findings, since it isn’t based just on...

What's Up (or Down) With the Highest-Priced Markets?

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 02

I extracted this little table from a spreadsheet sent to me on Friday by Zillow.com. This data and lots more is going to be posted on the Zillow website on...

14-Room Apt. on Park Avenue: $750,000?

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 02

The co-op apartment on New York's exclusive Park Avenue at 70th Street is fit for a billionaire: 14 rooms with five maids' rooms and a 37-foot gallery. According to The...

Another Surprise on Rising Home Prices

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 30

Attention, everyone who thinks Zillow knows zippo about home valuations (read some recent blog comments here and here): It ain't just Zillow that's saying home values are up. Check out...

Home Values Are Up. Repeat: Up

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 27

Would you believe that home values are up? According to Zillow.com, home values rose 4.8% in the third quarter in the 36 major metropolitan areas covered by its Zindex. That...

This Just In From Boston ... Prices "Could Keep Increasing"

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 16

Mild optimism on housing out of Boston today. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston issued a 34-page brief (only an economist would call 34 pages "brief") saying that "the national...

An Appraiser's Take on the Zillow Controversy

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 01

Maybe you heard that a coalition of community activist groups is accusing Zillow.com of misvaluing homes in black and Latino neighborhoods. It's asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. Zillow...

Oh, the Humanity!

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 28

Every problem has to have a public face, and to many people, David Lereah is the public face of the housing slump. There is an entire blog devoted to trashing...

Which Bounces Back Faster? Phoenix or San Francisco?

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 27

I wrote an article for the current issue of BusinessWeek called Boom! Bust! Boom? Here's a link. My main finding is that around 40% of the major markets where there...

The Housing Bust: Sorry, It Ain't Over Yet

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 18

People are getting very excited about the report today that starts on construction of private housing rose 5.9% in September. Sorry: Despite the September uptick, the housing bust ain't over...

Moving to a Cheaper Neighborhood Doesn't Always Pay

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 11

Interesting report out today from the Center for Housing Policy, which concludes that most of the savings that moderate-income families get from moving to a neighborhood with cheaper housing are...

Why the U.S. Slump Could Be Worse Than the U.K. One

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 06

Don't count on the U.S. to escape from a housing downturn as easily as the United Kingdom did, Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg says today. Here's Rosenberg's argument for why...

A new way to hedge against falling housing values

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 30

This development has gotten very little ink (in fact the only publicly accessible story I could turn up on it was this one from last June) but the Chicago Mercantile...

84 of 100 major markets overpriced

Posted by: Peter Coy on August 30

This just in from John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Giving it to you unedited: 84% of Markets Are Overpriced Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas (based on annual permit activity):...

Prices down in Boston, Vegas, Miami ...

Posted by: Peter Coy on August 29

Boston was the only major metro area in the U.S. where single-family home prices fell between June 2005 and June 2006--a 1.9% decline, according to a measure released today by...

San Francisco, Boston, and Other 'Superstar Cities'

Posted by: Peter Coy on August 04

Economists have twisted themselves in knots trying to explain why housing prices in cities like San Francisco and Boston are so high. One theory says that the cities have better...

Housing Prices Stronger Than You Think

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on July 27

I find it incredibly refreshing to read Michael Youngblood’s reports on housing prices in the U.S. Why? Because the managing director of asset-backed securities research at Friedman Billings Ramsey &...

Global House Price Index

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 04

Sometimes we bring you news as it happens and sometimes, like now, we're just a little bit late. With that apology, here are the findings of what's billed as the...

Land Swings Home Prices

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 26

The cost of land is an increasingly important factor in the prices of homes. Not just in a few markets with well-known shortages of open space like San Francisco. Even...

Overvalued Markets

Posted by: Peter Coy on June 12

National City Corp., the Cleveland-based banking company, and market researcher Global Insight are out today with the latest edition of their widely watched quarterly report on overvalued housing markets. It...

Housing Glut?

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on June 01

Ian Shepherdson, Chief U.S. Economist of High Frequency Economics has touted his bearish housing market views for months. In fact, he predicted something of a summer meltdown. He’s certainly in...

Meanwhile in China ...

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 30

The Chinese government is alarmed about speculation in the housing market and is trying to dampen it. Here's an article about it from the English edition of the People's Daily....

High Cost of Smart Growth

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 30

Are restrictive zoning laws making housing unaffordable? There's a strong argument that the high cost of housing in markets like New York, Boston, and San Francisco is at least partly...

Is $75 Million Too Much for a House?

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 17

Is $75 million more than anyone should spend for a house? According to a Reuters story, that's the asking price for a house in Orange County, Calif. If it sold...

Gotta Laugh

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 08

Yeah, I know I already plugged America's Overvalued Real Estate a month ago, but here I go again. Check out this item from late last week. Location: Culver City, Calif....

Overvalued Real Estate

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 10

We scan the blogosphere so you don't have to. Check out a great little blog called America's Overvalued Real Estate. The top item right now is about a 299-square-foot house...

Is the Real Estate Market Cruising for a Bruising?

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 30

Your votes, please. First, read the cover story in BusinessWeek, put together by your Hot Property blogging team, and then weigh in with your thoughts by clicking on the Comment...

Is US housing 20% overvalued?

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 07

Jan Hatzius, an economist at Goldman Sachs & Co., just wrote an interesting report that should make anyone who bought at the top in a bubble market feel a little...

Summer Meltdown

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on February 14

The problem with economic statistics are that they tend to tell the story after the reader already knows it. But Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, NY, tries...

Mistake #37--Are You Making It?

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 09

Imagine you're a renter moving from San Francisco to Pittsburgh. All of your rental options look marvelously cheap by San Francisco standards. So you pick out a nice apartment--much nicer...

Zillow Goes Live--Too Soon?

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 08

Rich Barton and crew finally got tired of all the jabs about how long it was taking to launch Zillow.com, their well-funded and well-publicized homebuyer website. Barton even promised to...

A futures market for housing prices

Posted by: Dean Foust on December 19

If you’ve bought a house in a bubbly urban market and are suddenly fearful of losing a big chunk of your nest egg if prices fall, what do you do?...

Interested in reading about the housing bubble?

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on December 19

A day doesn’t go by without an article in some major newspaper about the housing bubble, when it’s going to burst and what will happen to the economy. Personally,...

A blog that tracks listing volumes

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 30

What do you call a blog that tracks the number of listings by market? A backlog blog? A B(ack)LOG? In any case, check it out here....

Rising Inventories of Unsold Homes

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 28

There was worrisome news today in the report from the National Association of Realtors on October sales of existing homes. But the scary part wasn't where you would think to...

Guess How Much This Place Is Going For

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 22

Look at this place, guess how much it's selling for, and then, to check your answer, click on Continue reading ......

The Hot New Game of Lowballing

Posted by: Peter Coy on November 21

Lowballing is the profitable game of submitting a ludicrously low bid on a house just to see if the seller goes for it. The game didn't get played much over...

The Westchester Tease

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on November 07

Pimco, the big money management firm, has had representatives out riding with real estate brokers in 20 major metropolitan markets across the country to gauge the state of the housing...

Land Sales Could Slow

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 31

Owners of undeveloped land still have dollar signs in their eyes. But with the housing market cooling, builders aren't so willing to pay up for buildable lots. That means there...

Greenspan's Legacy in Housing

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 24

Forget inflation, recessions, and stock market crashes. Hot Property aficionados want to know one thing about Alan Greenspan and one thing alone: What did he have to do with the...

What the Federal Reserve Is Seeing

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 20

Here's what the Federal Reserve had to say yesterday about the housing market in its Beige Book summary of economic conditions: Residential real estate activity remained generally strong, but reports...

Home price danger zones

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on October 19

PMI Group, one of the nation's largest insurers of home mortgages, says there are five areas of the country with a risk of price declines over 50%. All are in...

Apartments converting to condos/co-ops

Posted by: Amey Stone on September 20

One of the reasons why many people argue that high-priced city apartments are immune from housing bubbles is that there is often a lack of buildable land. The reasoning goes:...

Is Florida housing a bubble? One economist says no...

Posted by: Dean Foust on September 09

Few markets have boomed like Florida. Prices there are up 33% in the past year, up 105% over the past five years, and have risen a honking 180.7% over the...

Another valuation report

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 25

There's yet another report out trying to assess which local housing markets are overvalued, this one by the economists at National City Corp., a Cleveland-based bank. The author of the...

New home sales soar, but median price drops

Posted by: Amey Stone on August 24

Surprise! New home sales hit another high. In July a record pace of 1.41 million new homes were sold (that figure is annualized and adjusted for seasonality), up from June's...

Stretched to the max in California

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 19

How is it that the number of homes sold in California keeps going up even as housing prices rise? The Public Policy Institute of California asked that question and got...

No more Golden Gate

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on August 16

The once red-hot San Francisco market is starting to cool. New info from market researcher DataQuick shows the number of homes and condos sold in the Bay Area fell 11.9%...

Ominous signs in the U.K. housing market

Posted by: Amey Stone on July 14

I met today with Pamela Holding, portfolio manager of Putnam Investments' International Growth and Income Fund (PNGAX). She has been keeping watch on the U.K. and Australian housing markets to...

Past Housing Bubbles

Posted by: Amey Stone on July 12

It has been six weeks since I wrote a story that discussed the experience of homeowners who experienced a real estate meltdown in their local markets in the past (See,...

Is the Fed Propping Up Housing?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 08

Societe Generale, the big French investment house, came out with a report today arguing that the Federal Reserve wants to--needs to--prop up the U.S. housing market. The firm e-mailed copies...

Guess How Much These Houses Cost

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 05

How much do these two four-bedroom houses cost? Clue #1: They're in different cities....

More Flipping Tales

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on July 01

This one comes from Mandi Collins, a broker in Los Angeles. "And how hot is the market right now?" she asks before telling the tale of 2215 Scott, a home...

Manhattan Floats Skyward

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 01

News bulletin: The island of Manhattan--never firmly moored to Planet Earth--became fully detached in the second quarter of 2005 and is on its way toward the asteroid belt. That, at...

California Screamin'

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on June 30

The California Association of Realtors http://www.car.org put out its mid-year forecast this week. They figure the median home price will hit a record $523,150 in 2005, up 16% from 2004’s...