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In a harrowing turn, new home prices have plummeted by a staggering 18%, marking the most significant annual decline on record, surpassing even the depths of the 2008 financial crisis. The grim reality intensifies as builders face a crisis, with mortgage demand hitting its lowest since 1994, and housing defaults soaring to levels not seen since 2013. The average selling price is down almost $90,000 from last year, raising a critical question: How can this precarious situation end well? The housing market is in crisis mode, and caution is warranted.

Danger Will Robinson! Danger! Median sales price of homes in the US sank by -7.4% in Q2 2023. This is particulary dangerous since it was the worst correction in home prices since two rather nasty recessions of 1970 and 2008 (The Great Recession and financial crisis). This correction occured as M2 Money growth (green line) went negative. With Fed rate hikes, debt to income ratios are the highest in history. Mortgage rates are above 7% under Biden and Powell (not Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts). But not only are mortgage rates above 7%, but the mortgage credit box...

The US housing market faces a potential 19.5% correction, and more rate hikes from the central bank could make a crash even worse, Dallas Federal Reserve economists warned in a Tuesday research report. The global housing market has become frothy since 2020 as a result of the pandemic boom, according to authors Lauren Black and Enrique Martínez-García, and there's still a risk of a deep housing slide despite signs of easing home-price growth. Drawing parallels between the US and Germany, the economists added that some of the housing market froth can be attributed to the affordability crisis, though house-price-to-rent ratios...

Farmington, N.M. has the fastest-rising housing costs in the United States, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors scanning home prices across the nation. Communities in Florida and North Carolina took up seven of the top 10 metro areas with the fastest-growing home prices, with the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton area coming in second. The report found that prices for single-family homes increased in nearly 90 percent of all metro areas, with the median price increasing by 4 percent from the same time last year to $378,700. The report looked at changes in housing prices in 186 metropolitan...

SNIP Gary Berman is CEO of Tricon Residential, a Toronto-based company that has quietly become one of the largest owners of single-family homes in the United States. Gary Berman: So today, we own about 30,000 single family rental homes across the U.S., largely in the Sun Belt. And we've got probably about 75,000 people living in our homes. Lesley Stahl: You are a multi-billion dollar company. You're publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Gary Berman: Correct. Lesley Stahl: And the-- Gary Berman: Toronto Stock Exchange. Lesley Stahl: --Toronto Stock Exchange. I even read in one of your own...

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal that cited data from the National Association of Realtors and Fannie Mae caught our eye by highlighting an unfortunate reality of low interest rates: while they initially help even the playing field and make homes more affordable for more Americans, after a while, price appreciation will ultimately make housing less accessible for middle- and working-class Americans.Using data combined with anecdotes from home buyers, WSJ illustrated how the rapid pace of price appreciation over the last year is affecting the outlook for the housing market, as high prices negate the impact of mortgage...

Lots of people have been moving away from the west coast over the last decade, but we have never seen the sort of mass exodus that we have seen over the last year. This mass exodus has created some extremely hot real estate markets in desirable areas located away from the coast, and according to the Wall Street Journal the hottest real estate market in the entire country right now is Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Any house in the area that gets placed on the market is likely to spark a bidding war, and according to the Coeur d’Alene Association of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. home prices increased at the fastest pace in seven years in January as the pandemic has fueled demand for single-family houses even as the supply for such homes shrinks. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, released Tuesday, rose 11.1% in January from a year earlier. That's the biggest gain since March 2014. Prices rose in all 20 cities, and the 12-month increase was larger for all cities in January than in the previous month. “January’s data remain consistent with the view that COVID has encouraged potential buyers to move from urban apartments to suburban...

According to the latest data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller, US home prices in the top 20 cities rose at a stunning 10.10% year-over-year - its fastest acceleration since 2014...Source: BloombergThat is a price rise that is five times The Fed's 'mandated' level of inflation.Phoenix, San Diego and Seattle posted the biggest gains in prices. Nationally, the Case-Shiller index jumped 10.4% in December, also the biggest surge since 2014.Historically low mortgage rates have fueled a pandemic housing rally, with scant inventory of homes to buy helping to boost prices.As in the housing boom of the mid-2000s, home prices are rising faster...

The Fed's most frequent lament is that no matter how many trillions in bonds (and stocks and ETFs) it buys or how much liquidity it forehoses into the market, it just can't push inflation higher.Well, here's an idea: maybe all the central-planning megabrains at the Marriner Eccles building and 33 Liberty Street can take a break from whatever circle jerk they are engaged in right now, and look at the latest Case Shiller numbers which showed not only that home prices surged at the fastest pace in seven years, rising more than 9% compared to a year ago...... but that...

"The president of the United States, he represents the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and southern Maryland, but he also represents the rest of the country," Mulvaney said on a call to outline the budget plan. "And I can assure you that we did not write this budget with an eye toward what it would do to the value of your condo," he said. That was Mulvaney's response when he was asked about reports warning of the budget's possible downward effect on home prices.

>High home prices are pushing three groups of people out of big, expensive cities: low-income workers, people in rural-based industries, and millennials. Trulia data scientist Mark Uh examined how the affordability crisis is pricing out various income groups.Using data from the 2014 five-year US Census American Community Survey, Uh looked into migration patterns away from the biggest — and often most expensive — cities.He wrote in a post Thursday, "Millennials accounted for the largest share of out migration [by age group] at 51.1%, and they also had the highest move-away rate relative to expectation at +105.6%."Although Millennials moved out at...

<p>The Federal Reserve said Thursday that U.S. household net worth increased 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter to $86.8 trillion, up from $85.2 trillion in the third quarter. Americans' stock and mutual fund portfolios grew $758 billion. Home values rose $458 billion.</p>

Houses have become stocks... the higher the price, the more demand (especially as the government has your back with low down-payment loans and the re-emergence of IOs). With Existing Home Sales soaring to a SAAR of 5.49 million, the highest since early 2007, the fact that median home prices are at an all-time high appears to be any problem for the releveraging American (or Chinese) homebuyer.  Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says backed by June's solid gain in closings, this year's spring buying season has been the strongest since the downturn. "Buyers have come back in force, leading to the...

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Case-Shiller's 20-city home price index dropped 0.1% MoM in October (on an unadjusted basis) - the second monthly drop in a row and biggest drop since the Polar Vortex. Year-over-year, home prices rose 4.5% - the weakest growth since October 2012. While this modestly beat expectations (+4.5% vs +4.4% exp.), it is the 11th month in a row of growth deceleration. Also of note: the Top 20 Composite index is now down for the second month in a row, dropping to 173.36. The question now is whether the downside momentum will pick up.Worst annual gain since Oct 2012 and...

Following misses in yesterday's Markit Service PMI, Existing Home Sales and the Dallas Fed report, and today's Durable Goods numbers, we just made it a pentafecta for misses in US econ data, when the just released August Case-Shiller data for August confirmed once again that US housing is rapidly slowing down, when the Top 20 Composite Index (Seasonally Adjusted) posted another decline in August, its fourth in a row, declining by -0.15% and missing expectations of a modest 0.2% rebound (following last month's -0.5%) decline. The best summary of the situation came from S&P's David Blitzer: "The deceleration in...

Although investors hang on every comment by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen to get insight on the direction of interest rates and what it means for the economy and asset prices, the real power to determine U.S. interest rates may be in the hands of China, according to Lombard Street Research. Facing an overvalued currency that is hurting corporate profits and slowing growth, China appears ready to dump its $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds to drive U.S. interest rates up and strengthen the dollar... (snip) China tried to slow the fall of the dollar by increasing its holdings in...

Mamta BadkarMay 27, 2014 We just got March S&P Case-Shiller home prices that beat expectations. The numbers showed home prices were cooling, but they nevertheless reflected increases on month-over-month and year-over-year bases. However, Ian Shepherdson chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics says "this report makes no sense." This is because "every indicator" of the house market he watches is slowing or falling. "We don't know if the March problem is Easter seasonal adjustments or the long-standing issue of fully adjusting for changes in the proportion of foreclosure sales in the sample, but we think the real trend in existing home prices...

Here we go again.  Having just recently endured a one-hour phone conversation with my friend Steve, a mortgage broker, I’m a little bit confused and somewhat worried.  Since most of the houses sold in the past year have been “all-cash” transactions, combined with the fact that mortgage applications have fallen off the cliff, I asked Steve if that means that the average person is no longer a buyer.  Steve replied, “Define the average person.”  I articulated, “It’s not someone who pays “all-cash” because I know that’s the technique on Wall Street, and I also know it’s a select few...