Deciding the Election Based on Housing Values?

November 6, 2012

With personal wealth so heavily tied to real estate equity, voters answering the question “am I better off today than four years ago” may look at recent listing price trends. From July 2011 through October 2012 we have seen a National Average increase in median values of 8.2% in 26 of the major MSA’s we [...]

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San Francisco champions in baseball, and rents.

November 2, 2012

It’s fun to be the world champs – but a championship ring can come with a rich price tag. With a view of the city streets brimming with nearly one million people attending the Giant’s victory parade, a San Francisco-based client commented “I hope they aren’t looking for rental housing.”  The San Francisco Bay Area [...]

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Is it Purely a Cheap-Money-Driven Housing Recovery?

October 23, 2012

Here’s a fascinating Google search trend chart pointed out by a friend.     Two Google searches: the generic, “Buying a home” has been declining since the peak of the bubble. The cheap-mortgage-targeted  ”How much house can I afford?’ started spiking in early 2011, when the first signs of recovery in the non-judicial foreclosure states [...]

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Here’s what to expect from the housing market for the rest of 2012

July 10, 2012

2012 has been good to the US Housing Market. In most places home prices are up, demand is up, money is super cheap, and transaction volume is up. Banks are unloading their backlog at steady but not disruptive pace. Not surprising with the improving market conditions, new delinquencies are declining rapidly. The press and traditional housing market [...]

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Why is Housing Inventory So Darn Low?

July 2, 2012

I’ve just finished a week-long tour of some of the big financial institutions in Dallas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles with our Wall Street research partner Discern. These meetings always make me look deeply into the data because we’re faced with insightful questions from smart people and I always want to have insightful answers. I [...]

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In Much of California, Renting More Expensive than Buying

May 3, 2012

Home prices in California are stupid high, right? It must be a better deal to rent. At least in the big metros. Well not according to our friends at Movoto.com. Movoto looked at home prices in 11 counties across the state of California and compared them to the average rents in those counties. In eight [...]

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Dear January, The housing market is much better now.

March 27, 2012

From yesterday on Calculated Risk -”House Prices & Lagged Data” – But sometimes the lag can be much longer. Tomorrow morning the January Case-Shiller house price index will be released. This is actually a three month average for house sales recorded in November, December and January. But remember that the purchase agreement for a house [...]

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The Detroit Housing Market: And you thought we were crazy…

February 28, 2012

Business Insider Pop Quiz: Which is the only housing market that showed gains in 2011 (using the Case-Shiller Home Price Index)? Answer: Detroit …which is what we’ve been saying for months: Trend Chart of the Day: Detroit Home Prices on the rise? (Aug 15, 2011) Top 3 US Housing Markets (Oct 20, 2011) Imported from [...]

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