Dallas-area home prices fall nearly 5%

Dallas-area home prices started the new year with an almost 5 percent drop in home prices.

But the local decline was the lowest among 20 cities included in the January Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

Nationwide home prices were down by a record 19 percent.

And 14 of the 20 cities included in the benchmark monthly survey had double digit price declines from a year earlier..

“Home prices, which peaked in mid-2006, continued their decline in 2009,” S&P’s David M. Blitzer said in the Tuesday report. “There are very few bright spots that one can see in the data.

“Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path.”

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Home Prices Rose in January

The federal government's gauge of home prices rose in January for the first time in 10 months. The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported Tuesday that home prices increased 1.7% in January from the previous month, though they are still down about 10% from their April 2007 peak. The government noted that sales in January were "relatively low," which could skew the result.

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Existing-Home Sales Rebound, but Prices Plunge

House sales are up, accordin Wall Street Jurnal article, but prices will keep going down, while the inventory is growing and foreclosures and short sales still keep coming on the market.

Existing-home sales rebounded in February, climbing above expectations, but prices plunged again.

Home resales climbed to a 4.72 million annual rate, a 5.1% increase from January's unrevised 4.49 million annual pace, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

Foreclosures and short sales reflect about 45% of total existing-home sales. Distressed properties are discounted, so the abundance of these sales prices new homes out of the market, discouraging construction and weakening the overall housing sector further.

With so many distressed sales, the median price for an existing home fell last month. At $165,400 in February, the median price was down 15.5% from $195,800 in February 2008. The median price in January this year was $164,800. The 15.5% plunge.

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Housing Turnaround? Home Sales Up in March

Two reports released this week suggest that March was a solid month for the U.S. housing market, an unexpected turnaround for a housing market that had slowed down.

The National Association of Realtors reported that existing homes sold at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 6.92 million units in March, up from February's pace but below the year-ago level.

The Census Bureau said new home sales showed surprising strength as well. Buyers scooped up new homes at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.213 million units -- 13.8 percent higher than in February.

Both reports outdid analysts' expectations.
Wasn't the housing market supposed to be slowing down? Yes, analysts have been talking about an expected slowdown for the past year.

It's said that as interest rates go up, buyer interest wanes. Freddie Mac said the interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.32 percent, 0.39 percent higher than a year ago. So where's the slowdown?

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Dallas-Fort Worth pre-owned home sales fall 28%

Existing home sales in North Texas continued to fall in February from last year's levels, while median prices were essentially flat, according to a report released Tuesday.


North Texas sales of pre-owned, single-family homes amounted to 4,216 in February, 28 percent below their level in February 2008, according to preliminary figures from North Texas Real Estate Information Systems Inc. and Texas A&M University's Real Estate Center.
The 28 percent decline was in line with a 27 percent drop in January.

"Twenty-eight percent is a pretty big number," said Jim Gaines, an economist at the A&M center. "It is a reflection of how the recession is catching up now with Texas in full force."
The February median price of $136,350 fell 2 percent from the median price a year ago.
"That's not real bad; it's essentially flat," Gaines said.

Sales of condos and townhomes were down 31 percent in February from the same month last year, while the median price was off 1 percent.
Analysts say homebuyers remain skittish because of the economy.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area had 7,100 fewer jobs in January than in the same month last year. Although the local economy remains healthier than the U.S. economy as a whole, additional job losses are expected this year.

"We have heard anecdotally that it's difficult to convert shoppers into buyers," said Ted Wilson, a Dallas housing analyst with Residential Strategies. "People are obviously very nervous about the economy right now. There are a lot of people being noncommittal until they understand where this thing's going to bottom."

Report: More than 1 in 5 Dallas-area homeowners owe more than house is worth

The number of Dallas-area residents who owe more than their houses are worth is growing.

At the end of 2008, more than one in five Dallas-area homeowners – 21.1 percent – were underwater on their mortgages, according to a report released Wednesday by First American CoreLogic.

That's slightly higher than the U.S. average but well below the percentage of homeowners who have negative equity in states hard-hit in the housing slump, the California-based mortgage analyst said.

In Nevada, for instance, about 55 percent of homeowners with mortgages owe more than the value of their houses. And in Michigan, Arizona and Florida, more than a third are underwater.
The number of Fort Worth-area home mortgage owners who have negative equity, at 24.2 percent, is even higher than the Dallas figure, the researchers said.

The new report is a change from earlier studies that estimated about 16 percent of Dallas-Fort Worth homeowners with mortgages were underwater with their home loans. That was slightly less than the national average.

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Loan Modification Plan Gets Sweeter

U.S. Treasury's update on its $75 billion mortgage scheme to reach larger loans and incentives will spill over into other programs.

Like most government bailouts these days, the Obama administration's loan modification program seems to be getting more ambitious while some major questions remain unanswered.

The U.S. Treasury provided new details Tuesday about its $75 billion effort to rework up to 4 million distressed mortgages. While much of the plan resembles the skeletal version released two weeks earlier, a few surprises tucked in will increase the program's scope.

One of them: Struggling borrowers with mortgages up to $729,750--a higher ceiling than many experts had expected--will be eligible for the program. This will cast a much wider net by suddenly including more expensive homes common in high-cost areas.

As earlier disclosed, the program will use blunt cash incentives to get servicers, lenders, investors and borrowers to rework distressed mortgages into ones with lower more manageable payments equal to 38% of a borrower's income. Then Treasury will match interest rate reductions and also shoulder part of principal write-downs to get the payment down to 31%. But if they participate in the program, lenders no longer get to decide which loans they modify--they must use the government’s guidelines.

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