Bay Area Real Estate Trends

From the San Francisco Fed: To assist local efforts to prevent foreclosures and mitigate the impact of foreclosures on neighborhoods, the Community Development Department has prepared a series of presentations and maps detailing local data on delinquency and foreclosure trends in the subprime market. They offer several slides with captions that California home prices are [...]

National home prices have officially reached new post-bubble lows (seasonally-adjusted) according to the January 2012 Case-Shiller Home Price Index. From Standard and Poors: Data through November 2011, released today by S&P Indices for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices … showed declines of 1.3% for both the 10- and 20-City Composites in November over October. For [...]

Interesting graph comparing Japanese home prices to the Case-Shiller index before and after the housing bubbles burst. Hat-tip Kevin Depew:

Wall St Journal, by way of Calculated Risk had some housing comments recently along the lines of markets “improving from the bottom up“. They referenced some data suggesting a surge in buying activity within lower price sectors of real estate in New York and New Jersey. They continued with analyst commentary suggesting that it was [...]

Dear Edward DeMarco, Your position regarding principal reduction for underwater mortgages illustrates just how unfit you are to be running the FHFA. You argue against principal reductions, because it might cost “marginally” more than principal forbearance, yet you completely ignore all of the data suggesting that negative equity leads to strategic defaults and a potential [...]

The price of anything in a free market is determined by supply and demand. More demand relative to supply, and prices go up. More supply, they go down. So what does it say about our housing market when both supply and prices fell in 2011? NAR reported that the median price for existing home sales [...]