Dallas-area home prices drop 4.1% in new report

Dallas-area home prices are down 4.1 percent in May from a year ago in the latest Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index report.

But residential values here are showing modest improvements from a low point set early in 2009, according to the data released Tuesday.

Nationwide, the rate of home price decline is less dramatic than in recent months.

“The pace of descent in home values appears to be slowing,” Standard & Poor’s David Blitzer said in the just released report.

“While many indicators are showing signs of life in the U.S. house market, we should remember that on a year-over-year basis, home prices are still down about 17 percent on average across all metro areas, so we likely do have a way to go before we see sustained home price appreciation.”

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June housing construction rises more than expected

Is it just a good news or a positive sign for coming soon recovery? looks like more a good news among the bad once. Lets hope it is a light in the tunnel.

WASHINGTON — Construction of new U.S. homes rose in June to the highest level in seven months as builders rushed to pour foundations for homes that must be completed by the end of November for first-time buyers to take advantage of a special tax break.

The Commerce Department said Friday that construction of new homes and apartments jumped 3.6 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 582,000 units, from an upwardly revised rate of 562,000 in May.

It was better than the 530,000-unit pace economists expected, and was the second straight monthly increase after April’s record low of 479,000 units.

Compared with the same month a year ago, however, June starts were down 46%, the Commerce Department said.

Homebuyers are being attracted by lower prices, and first-time buyers can also take advantage of a tax credit worth 10 percent of the purchase price, with a cap of $8,000, which was included in the federal stimulus package.

“The largest spark...has been the looming deadline,” said David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. His trade group said Thursday that the confidence level of builders has risen to the highest level in nearly a year.

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Housing recession finally hits in heart of Dallas

Close-in Dallas-area neighborhoods that had dodged the worst of the housing recession are now getting clobbered.

Park Cities home sales plunged 37 percent in the first half of 2009.

In North Dallas, sales were down 19 percent from the same period last year, and median prices are off 17 percent.

Sales are down 23 percent this year in Oak Cliff and 20 percent in East Dallas.Housing market woes, which started in far suburban areas, have finally taken root in the heart of town, the latest statistics show.Real-estate agents blame the in-town slowdown on a number of factors.

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Dallas-Fort Worth home foreclosure postings decline

The number of Dallas-Fort Worth area homes faced with foreclosure has dropped after a series of recent run-ups.

August’s foreclosure auctions will include 4,796 properties, Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service said Thursday.

It’s the first time in five months that postings have dropped below the 5,000 level.But foreclosure filings in the four-county area are still 5 percent higher than a year ago.

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In California, mortgage scammers find easy pickings

As foreclosures climb, so does fraud by schemers preying on desperate homeowners hoping to modify their loans. State investigators have 750 open cases -- up from just 10 a year ago.

Maricela Castellanos sat at her desk, the telephone pressed to her ear, a chill running through her body.

A representative from her mortgage company was on the line with troubling information about the loan on Castellanos' Hesperia home.

No one at the company had previously been in contact with her, Castellanos recalled the man saying. The bank had no record of a new loan agreement with her, he said, nor had it received cashier's checks for $2,260 and $1,408.23 she said she had sent.

Castellanos had been a victim of an alleged loan modification swindle -- a financial crime in which scammers pretend to help distressed borrowers renegotiate their mortgages with their banks but instead pocket the money and leave the homeowners in worse straits than before.

Law enforcement officials say the scams are becoming increasingly prevalent, especially in California, where the Department of Real Estate has reported an explosion from 10 open cases a year ago to more than 750 this spring. Nationally, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder has said that the FBI's "rescue scam" caseload is up 400% from five years ago.

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Real Estate Seeing Uptick

Real estate might be seeing a seasonal uptick, after the RPX index for housing prices in U.S. metropolitan cities was up in April.

Welcome again to our lively discussion of property investments and the economy. We've assembled our panel of real estate experts: Donald Trump Jr. of the Trump Organization, Peter Slatin of Real Capital Analytics and Michael Feder of Radar Logic, all based in New York. (Two of our regular panelists from the West Coast, Spencer Rascoff of Zillow.com and Patrick Lashinsky of ZipRealty, are away today.)

We have a guest: Sami Inkinen, of Trulia.com. Trulia.com is a San Francisco company that publishes house listings, data and analytics about neighborhoods all around the U.S. for free on its Web site. Sami is chief operating officer of Trulia.com.

Gentlemen, we'll talk a little later about capitulation, which I think of as the moment when home sellers finally stop calling every bid they see "lowball." But first--Michael of Radar Logic reported this week that its RPX index of housing prices for U.S. metros was up in April, for the first time since June 2007. What's to say this isn't just a seasonal uptick?

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Will the CAP and Trade bill kill the housing market?

While people were distracted by Michael Jackson's death, the Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was passed in Congress. Part of this bill is a requirement for all home sales to be conditioned upon an energy audit and an energy rating assessment labeling program. How much additional selling costs will all sellers now be required to pay to comply with the proposed requirements? How much will sellers need to invest in older homes to bring them up to the required conditions? Will sellers will have enough equity in their house to do that and are they going to have cash to update their house. Will buyers agree to pay a higher price for the renovation or in this buyers market will sellers need to reduce their selling price and lose money? A lot of questions that no one wants to answer and we all know that the only way out of recession is to fix the housing market.

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Dallas-Fort Worth home prices drop 5% in new report

Dallas-Fort Worth home prices showed no sign of a rebound in the latest Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index.

Home prices dropped 5 percent in the D-FW area in April from a year earlier, according to the benchmark monthly survey. Prices fell 18.1 percent across the 20 U.S. metropolitan markets included in the report.

Still, the rate of nationwide home price decline has improved slightly from record drops earlier this year, according to Case-Shiller researchers.

"Furthermore, every metro area except Charlotte [N.C.] recorded an improvement in monthly returns over March," S&P's David M. Blitzer said in the report. "While one month's data cannot determine if a turnaround has begun, it seems that some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions.

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