Real Estate Information

'Why is Eden Prairie No. 1 this year? Not only is it family-friendly, it has a dynamite economy too.

At 5.1%, its unemployment rate is nearly one percentage point below the county rate and more than four points below the national average. It helps when you've got 50,000 jobs right in town.

Major employers include Fortune 500 trucking company C.H. Robinson, hearing-aid maker Starkey Labs, and the Minnesota Vikings, whose practice facility and front office are here. As for fiscal strength, Moody's gives the town a perfect AAA bond rating.

While it doesn't have much of a downtown, there's plenty of outer beauty: from gently rolling hills to 17 lakes that residents flock to year-round for swimming and ice skating. Town parks are laced with 125 miles of running, hiking, and biking trails.

No wonder residents rank among the healthiest people in the nation. Add in top-notch schools and safe streets and you've got a place that's tough to beat." -Ismat Mangla 

Source: Money Magazine

Tue Jun 29, 2010 3:52pm EDT

WASHINGTON June 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved giving extra time to homebuyers trying to get a popular federal tax credit by the end of the month.

The House backed a measure to extend the closing deadline to Sept. 30 for buyers who met the April 30 deadline to have a signed contract. The current deadline requires those buyers to close the transaction by June 30 to receive the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers.

Source: Reuters.com

Up to 180,000 home buyers will lose their tax credit through no fault of their own if Congress fails to pass an extension to the home buyer tax credit by June 30 when the closing deadline expires.

Included in that number are thousands of home buyers in every state of the union, from 390 in Wyoming to 17,700 in California, according to estimates by the National Association of REALTORS®.

“We are strongly urging the Senate and the House to act quickly to pass this legislation and ease the minds and pocketbooks of these home buyers,” said NAR President Vicki Cox Golder, owner of Vicki L. Cox & Associates in Tucson, Ariz.

“These are not buyers who just entered into the market. These are buyers who previously met all the qualifications for the tax credit, but find themselves at the mercy of a workflow jam with lenders or other delays such as lapses in the National Flood Insurance Program, Rural Housing Service, and new home construction, and might not be able to complete the purchase of their homes by the current deadline,” said Golder. “It would be a tragedy for them not to be able to complete the purchase in time to claim the credit.”

NAR issued the following state-by-state estimate of the number of home sales that would be delayed beyond the June 30 deadline; numbers are rounded to the nearest 10:

Alabama, 2,590; Alaska, 830; Arizona, 5,440; Arkansas, 2,090; California, 17,700; Colorado, 3,390; Connecticut, 1,770; Delaware, 400; District of Columbia, 300; Florida, 14,830; Georgia, 6,270; Hawaii, 710; Idaho, 1,270; Illinois, 7,030; Indiana, 3,560; Iowa, 2, 030; Kansas, 1,840; Kentucky, 2,540; Louisiana,1,800; Maine, 840; Maryland, 2,630; Massachusetts, 3,930; Michigan, 6,470; Minnesota, 3,760; Mississippi, 1,530; Missouri, 3,600; Montana, 760; Nebraska, 1,110; Nevada, 3,800; New Hampshire, 690; New Jersey, 4,300; New Mexico, 1,160; New York, 9,190; North Carolina, 4,890; North Dakota, 460; Ohio, 8,510; Oklahoma, 2,760; Oregon, 2,090; Pennsylvania, 5,830; Rhode Island, 500; South Carolina, 2,460; South Dakota, 500; Tennessee, 3,910; Texas, 15,340; Utah, 1,130; Vermont, 400; Virginia, 3,890; Washington, 3,190; West Virginia, 940; Wisconsin, 2,690; and Wyoming, 390.

Source: NAR

Homeownership rates are down 2 percentage points from their 2006 peak, but could fall another 5 percentage points in the next couple of years, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The study subtracts the number of home owners who are underwater from the official homeownership rate calculated quarterly by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Officially, homeownership was 67.2 percent at the end of 2009, but the report says that effectively the rate is about 62 percent if those home owners likely to lose their homes are subtracted from the total.

Cities cited as having very low effective homeownership rates include Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Tampa, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos (06/07/2010)

Here's a look at a price breakdown by region:

• Northeast. The median existing single-family home price in the Northeast rose 9.0 percent to $256,300 in the first quarter from the same quarter in 2009. Existing-home sales in the Northeast fell 17.7 percent in the first quarter to a level of 850,000 but are 19.7 percent higher than a year ago.

• Midwest. The median existing single-family home price slipped 0.8 percent to $130,600 in the first quarter from a year ago. Existing-home sales in the Midwest dropped 17.3 percent in the first quarter to a pace of 1.13 million but are 10.8 percent above the first quarter of 2009.

• South. In the South, the median existing single-family home price was $148,200 in the first quarter, up 1.1 percent from the first quarter of 2009. Existing-home sales in the South fell 14.6 percent in the first quarter to an annual rate of 1.89 million but are 10.7 percent higher than a year ago.

• West. The median existing single-family home price in the West was $210,200 in the fourth quarter, which is 8.3 percent below a year ago. Existing-home sales in the West declined 6.8 percent in the first quarter to an annual rate of 1.27 million but are 8.3 percent higher than the first quarter of 2009.

Source: NAR

The expiration of the home buyer tax credits won’t deter optimistic households who believe the market is improving, according to a survey released Wednesday by Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services.

More than 90 percent of those surveyed believe the home buyer tax credits have helped both first-time buyers and the overall housing market, but 65 percent say that end of tax credits won’t reduce their personal interest in buying a home.

Over the next five years, 79 percent expect real estate prices to increase, and 20 percent expect prices to rise substantially. Only 12 percent believe prices will decrease.

Among renters, 75 percent believe owning a home is a better long-term choice for them than renting.

The majority of consumers also believe that homeownership is a good investment, with 75 percent saying it is better than stocks or bonds, 72 percent preferring it to mutual funds, and 74 percent saying it surpasses savings accounts.

Source: Prudential Real Estate and Relocation Services, Inc. (04/28/2010)

Households facing foreclosure rose 16 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and the number of homes repossessed and scheduled for sale by banks rose 35 percent compared to the first quarter of 2009, according to RealtyTrac – the highest numbers since the foreclosure sales company began keeping records in January 2005.

RealtyTrac senior vice president Rick Sharga says these rising numbers were a sign that banks were unclogging the bottlenecks that have delayed the processing of homes facing foreclosure. "We're right now on pace to see more than 1 million bank repossessions this year," he says.

Here are the 10 states with the most foreclosure filings in the first quarter:

• California
• Florida
• Arizona
• Illinois
• Michigan
• Georgia
• Texas
• Nevada
• Ohio
• Colorado

The Federal Reserve ends its purchase of mortgage securities this week and private investors are expected to step in.

The change probably won’t push mortgage rates up very much. Analysts expect they will rise less than a quarter of a percentage point in the next three months. That gain would increase a monthly payment on a $250,000 mortgage by $30.

In a statement released March 12, Freddie Mac predicted that mortgage rates would average 5.2 percent on a 30-year fixed loan after the Fed stops buying. Fannie Mae put the rate slightly higher at 5.13 percent.

Source: Bloomberg, Kathleen M. Howley (03/30/2010)

President Obama is announcing an expansion of foreclosure-prevent tactics, including a plan to reduce principal balances and special aid for unemployed borrowers.

The bulk of the responsibility for carrying out the new program will be assigned to the Federal Housing Administration, which will insure lenders against part of the losses.

The plan asks banks to write down loan balances to less than the value of the home. If there is both a first and second mortgage, the combined total would have to be no more than 115 percent of the home’s value.

The Treasury would pay part of unemployed homeowners’ loans for three months while they job hunt.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Nick Timiraos and James R. Hagerty (03/25/2010)

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett predicted that the real estate market downturn will end by 2011 as the housing inventory declines.

"Within a year or so, residential housing problems should largely be behind us," Buffett wrote in his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, where he is chairman and CEO. "Prices will remain far below 'bubble' levels, of course, but for every seller or lender hurt by this there will be a buyer who benefits. Indeed, many families that couldn't afford to buy an appropriate home a few years ago now find it well within their means."

He also pinpointed what he sees as the cause of the downturn. "People thought it was good news a few years back when housing starts — the supply side of the picture — were running about 2 million annually," wrote Buffett, "But household formations — the demand side — only amounted to about 1.2 million."

Source: Bloomberg News, Andrew Frye (03/01/2010)