statistics

What You Should Know When Buying A Short Sale or A Bank Owned Home (Part 3)

March 19, 2009

This is the final part of this series. I will be moving on to bigger and better things in the near future 🙂 I would like to focus on what you should expect from the banks after you have procured an offer on one of their properties. Short Sale The bank has not fully negotiated […]

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What It Means When More Than Half Of The Delinquent Homeowners Go Delinquent Again

December 9, 2008

Earlier this year and under pressure from the government, mortgage lenders made more than 200,000 loan modifications to delinquent homeowners. The modifications came in one of three forms, or a combination: Interest rate reduction Loan term extension Principal forgiveness But despite the modifications, as of October 1, more than half of the homeowners that received assistance were already two months behind on their modified monthly payments.

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4 States Account For 51 Percent Of The Nation’s October 2008 Foreclosures

November 15, 2008

Foreclosure is a hot topic among the press lately. It’s hard to turn on the television or open up a newspaper without seeing a story about it. But what’s most interesting about foreclosures is that they appear to be concentrated in certain areas of the country. According to the foreclosure-tracking service RealtyTrac, 4 states accounted […]

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Weak Employment Data May Boost The Affordability Of Homes

November 15, 2008

On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report. More commonly, it’s called the “jobs report” and the October’s data is trending with the rest of 2008. After shedding another 240,000 jobs last month, the economy has now put 1.2 million Americans out of work this year […]

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Home Sales Are Up, Home Supply Is Down — This Is What A Recovering Market Looks Like

October 27, 2008

Statistics are what you make of them, but sometimes, they can provide good perspective. For example, from its peak in 2005 to its trough in late-2007, the number of “used” homes sold nationwide plunged. In 2005: Roughly 7 million homes sold annually In 2007: Roughly 5 million homes sold annually Through all of 2008, though, […]

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Home Sales Are Up, Home Supply Is Down — This Is What A Recovering Market Looks Like

October 24, 2008

Statistics are what you make of them, but sometimes, they can provide good perspective. For example, from its peak in 2005 to its trough in late-2007, the number of “used” homes sold nationwide plunged. In 2005: Roughly 7 million homes sold annually In 2007: Roughly 5 million homes sold annually Through all of 2008, though, […]

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The Rising Cost Of A Small Downpayment

October 17, 2008

Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is a mortgage lender’s insurance policy against highly-leveraged homeowners.  It’s typically required when homeowner equity is less than 20 percent at the time of closing. With PMI defaults up 40 percent over last year, though, private mortgage insurers are taking big losses. They’re also taking outsized steps to prevent additional claims going forward […]

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Falling Home Supplies Are Bad News For Home Buyers (But Good News For Home Sellers)

September 25, 2008

The August Existing Home Sales report was released Wednesday, showing a decline in the number of homes sold nationwide, and a reduction in the median sales price. Not surprisingly, the media singled these two statistics out, playing them as a big negative. They’re not. The decline in sales wasn’t good, but it wasn’t terrible, either — sales […]

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What’s Good For Home Sellers Is Bad For Home Buyers : Builders Are Dialing It Back

September 18, 2008

In August, home builders broke ground on the fewest number of homes since January 1991. It was the 16th straight month in which Housing Starts declined. But, although the press labels these statistics indicative of a recession, home sellers nationwide quietly applaud them. With fewer new homes coming on the market, home sellers are finding that there’s […]

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The Worst Places To Find Local Real Estate Information

August 22, 2008

Stories on TV about the national real estate market are misleading to Americans. This is because there is no such thing as a “national real estate market”. Consider the latest American Housing Survey.  It found that there are 124,377,000 homes in America spread across: 50 states, with More than 30,000 incorporated cities, and with An […]

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The Median Home Sales Price Fell Nationally, But “National” Data Is Irrelevant

August 15, 2008

Each month, the National Association of Realtors® releases a study called the Existing Home Sales report.  It’s a detailed look at “used” home sales data from all four regions of the country. One of the key findings in each Existing Home Sales report is something called the “median sales price”, the statistical price point at which half […]

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Why Are Home Buyers Coming Back To The Market Now? There’s Suddenly Good Value In Real Estate.

July 25, 2008

Statistics won’t always tell the whole story, but they often provide good perspective. The graph at right shows Existing Home Sales data going back three years.  An “existing home” is one that can’t be called new construction; a “used home”, so to speak. Note the steep decline from 2005 through late-2007. Since November, however, Existing […]

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The Inflation Calculator Checks Whether Your Income Is Keeping Pace With The “Cost of Life”

July 22, 2008

The phrase “Consumer Price Index” can be intimidating and unclear to Americans.  It’s an economic term, after all, and not a part of everyday American language. It even has its own abbreviation to add to the confusion — CPI. So, when a layperson hears that “CPI is rising”, it’s not always clear what it means. The […]

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How Job Losses In The Economy Are Helping Home Affordability

July 3, 2008

On the first Friday of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report. More commonly, it’s called the “jobs report”. The jobs report is a sector-by-sector look into the U.S. economy and whether businesses are hiring — or firing — workers.  This is one of the reasons why its release is so […]

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Guess Which 4 States Accounted For More Than 50 Percent Of May 2008 Foreclosures

June 13, 2008

RealtyTrac released its most recent foreclosure statistics and if you only read the headlines, you think the entire country was on the verge of losing its homes. The underlying data tells a different story, however. More than half of the country’s foreclosure activity in May 2008 was tied to just 4 states in the union: California (28 […]

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Why It’s Good News For Home Buyers When Unemployment Rates Surge

June 6, 2008

On the first Friday of every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its Non-Farm Payrolls report. More commonly called the “jobs report”, today’s 2-page analysis of May 2008 shows that the economy shed jobs and that unemployment surged. This is terrific news for home affordability. That may sound counter-intuitive, so let’s dig deeper into the […]

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Why Mortgage Rates Aren’t Falling Even Though The Economy Is Shedding Jobs

May 2, 2008

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy shed 20,000 jobs in April 2008.  The labor force now counts at 146 million people as employed. Normally, a loss of jobs would foretell economic weakness and would be a good thing for mortgage rate shoppers.  Today, though, traders had been expecting a larger loss of […]

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The 80/20 Rule Applies To Foreclosures

April 29, 2008

RealtyTrac released Q1 2008 foreclosure statistics and the data follows an interesting statistical phenomenon most commonly known as the “80/20 Rule”. The 80/20 Rule states that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. In this case, 80 percent of bank repossessions in the first three months of 2008 came from […]

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It Doesn’t Matter That The Median Home Sale Price Rose In March 2008

April 23, 2008

The National Association of REALTORS released its Existing Home Sales report for March 2008.  An “existing home” is one that is not considered new construction. A sub-headline in the report showed that the median sales price of all homes sold in March increased by 2.5 percent to $200,700. But don’t assume that the housing market is […]

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Why “Median Sales Price” Reports Aren’t Helpful For Housing Markets

March 27, 2008

Each month, the Commerce Department and the National Association of REALTORS release national housing data. The former’s release is called the New Residential Sales report and the latter’s is called the Existing Home Sales report. Both reports highlight the “median sales price”, the point at which half of the homes in the U.S. sold for […]

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