Sales of Existing Homes Fell 3 Percent in March

After surging unexpectedly in February, home sales fell last month and prices took another double-digit tumble, according to industry data released today.

Sales of existing homes, including townhouses and condos, fell 3 percent in March compared with the previous month, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.57 million units. They were down 7 percent compared with the same period last year.

Sales fell the most in the Northeast, 8 percent, but were unchanged in the Midwest and down 4 percent in the West. Sales fell 1.7 percent in the South, which includes the Washington area.

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Dallas-Fort Worth home foreclosure filings rise to record high

Home foreclosure filings in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have risen to a record high, with more than 5,500 properties facing forced sale next month.

The number of houses threatened with foreclosure in May rose 25 percent from a year earlier, breaking all previous records, according to statistics released Thursday by Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service.

Worsening economic conditions have caused more homeowners to fall behind in their mortgage payments. But analysts with Foreclosure Listing Service say the biggest reason for the increase in postings in the last few months has been moratoriums on foreclosures put in place by many mortgage lenders.
"They have been reposting many of these properties every month because of the moratoriums," said George Roddy, Foreclosure Listing Service president. "They have no choice but to continue posting the properties for foreclosure while they negotiate with the borrowers."

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What's on Dallas real estate investors' minds? Lots!

The biggest homebuilding slowdown on record has left the Dallas-Fort Worth area with lots of empty lots.

How many? Enough to last more than five years, according to the latest estimates.
"Home starts have declined almost 67 percent while the lot supply has fallen only 2 percent," said local housing analyst Ted Wilson.

For investors, those unwanted properties offer the potential for profit.
More than 90,000 vacant home sites are sitting ready to go – many in far suburban areas of Dallas-Fort Worth. And there's even more surplus residential land planned for housing developments that have been put on hold.

"It may take many years for those markets to work down the oversupply," said Wilson, who's with Residential Strategies Inc.

The glut of home lots and land has caused builders to take billions of dollars in financial write-offs and left some lenders holding the bag with shaky loans.

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Banks aren't reselling many foreclosed homes

A vast "shadow inventory" of foreclosed homes that banks are holding off the market could wreak havoc with the already battered real estate sector, industry observers say.

Lenders nationwide are sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale, according to numerous data sources. And foreclosures, which banks unload at fire-sale prices, are a major factor driving home values down.
"We believe there are in the neighborhood of 600,000 properties nationwide that banks have repossessed but not put on the market," said Rick Sharga, vice president of RealtyTrac, which compiles nationwide statistics on foreclosures. "California probably represents 80,000 of those homes. It could be disastrous if the banks suddenly flooded the market with those distressed properties. You'd have further depreciation and carnage."

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Dallas-Fort Worth 1Q new home sales down 40%

Low interest rates and builder giveaways weren’t enough to lure buyers back to the new home market in the first quarter.

Sales of new homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were down 40 percent from the first three months of 2008, housing analyst MetroStudy Inc. said Tuesday.

Only about 4,200 new home sales were recorded in the area during the first quarter. That’s the lowest number of new homes sold in North Texas in more than a decade.

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