April 2012

Increased concerns about the troubles in Europe had the biggest influence on mortgage rates this week. As usual, investors reacted by shifting to relatively safer assets including US mortgage-backed securities (MBS), and mortgage rates again ended the week a little lower.

Spain has been the focus in Europe recently, but issues emerged this week from more surprising sources. The President of France is behind after the first round of voting in his bid to be reelected, and his opponent is not a supporter of austerity measures. In addition, budget talks broke down in the Netherlands after seven weeks, without an agreement on cutting spending. With weak economic data coming from nearly every euro zone country except for Germany, many people are questioning

A new development is catching home buyers off guard as the spring sales season gets under way: Bidding wars are back.

From California to Florida, many buyers are increasingly competing for the same house. Unlike the bidding wars that typified the go-go years and largely reflected surging sales, today's are a result of supply shortages.

Debbie and Bill Wetherell received multiple offers for their home.

"It's a little surprising because we thought bidding wars were done with," said Andy Aley, who is looking to buy his first home in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood. The 31-year-old attorney was outbid this year when he offered up to $23,000 above the $357,000 listing price and agreed to waive inspections and other closing conditions.

By Carla Hill

Housing affordability is still at a record high, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). It is at the highest level since record keeping began in 1970. This is based on the relationship between median home price, median family income and average mortgage interest rate.

NAR President Moe Veissi, broker-owner of Veissi & Associates Inc., in Miami, said this latest data underscores buyer opportunities in today’s market. "This is the first time the housing affordability index has broken the two hundred mark, meaning the typical family has roughly double the income needed to purchase a median-priced home," he said. "For buyers who can qualify for a mortgage, now is a very good time to become a homeowner."

Weaker than expected Employment data and increased concerns about Europe helped mortgage rates this week, and they ended lower than where they were before the March Employment report.

While slower employment growth is painful for the country in nearly every way, this generally bad news is actually favorable for mortgage rates. Against a consensus forecast of 200K, the economy added just 120K jobs in March. The Unemployment Rate dropped to 8.2%, the lowest level since January 2009, but the decline was due to people leaving the labor force rather than finding jobs. Average Hourly Earnings, a proxy for wage growth, increased at a 2.1% annual rate. Lower than expected job gains combined with tame wage increases helped mortgage rates move lower following the

Steve Brown-Dallas News

This year is shaping up to be the best for the local housing market since before the recession.

Home sales are up in all but a handful of Dallas-area residential districts. And in almost a dozen areas, home purchases are running more than a quarter higher than last year.

Home sales prices are also rising slowly in more than half the neighborhoods that The Dallas Morning News tracks each quarter.

“The broad-based increase in North Texas home sales suggests that buyers have become more confident about the economic environment,” said D’Ann Petersen, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

“Current conditions including a pickup in job growth, low interest rates and relatively affordable home

The number of foreclosure properties sold at auction, or trustee sales, dropped steeply for the second straight month, a March report from online listing service ForeclosureRadar.com shows.

Notices of default, the first step in the foreclosure process, decreased 77 percent to 1,136, and notices of trustee sale decreased 74.3 percent to 1,550. Average time to foreclose increased 22.4 percent to 404 days

It's easy to see why some analysts continue to predict a wave of foreclosures.

That won't happen because of financial regulations that were changed in 2008 to help banks remain solvent.  Before the Troubled Asset Relief Program, a government program to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions, the lender had to take a loss on

DEREK KRAVITZ and ALEX VEIGA

The Associated Press

Washington-Five years after the U.S. housing bust sent sales and prices plunging, the spring home-buying season is pointing to a long-awaited recovery.

Reduced prices, record-low mortgage rates, higher rents and an improving job market appear to be emboldening many would-be buyers. Open houses are drawing crowds. A wave of foreclosures is leading investors to grab bargain-priced homes.

And many people seem to have concluded that prices won’t drop much further. In some areas, prices have begun to tick up.

Interviews with more than two dozen potential buyers, sellers, brokers, agents and economists suggest that confidence is up and sales will move slowly but steadily higher.

“The

Museum Tower has unveiled 3 new model homes by local designers Emily Summers, Ann Schooler and Marco French. Each of the 3 homes has its own distinct style. Buyers can now get a sense for how these contemporary homes could look with a variety of interior furnishings.

Prices start around $1.4 million.

The housing market experienced a surge in the first quarter.

Pre-owned home sales were up 16 percent in the first three months of 2012 from the same period last year. And median home resale prices were up a solid 5 percent.

The price bump was even higher in March, with median prices up 11 percent from a year ago, according to numbers released Monday from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems Inc.

“The encouraging news is that March is the first real month of the selling season,” said Dr. James Gaines, an economist with the real estate center. “You can’t argue with the strength of these numbers.

“And you shouldn’t be surprised for the second quarter to see numbers as similarly

There was a lot of daily volatility for mortgage rates this week. On Tuesday, the Fed Minutes revealed a lack of enthusiasm for further easing, and this caused mortgage rates to jump. Increased concerns about Europe then helped mortgage rates improve on Wednesday and Thursday. The net result was a small increase in rates for the week.

Shifting expectations for future Fed policy has had a large influence on MBS prices lately, and that was certainly true on Tuesday. The Minutes from the March 13 Fed meeting caused investors to lower their expectations for additional quantitative easing (QE3). The Minutes suggested that most Fed officials would support QE3 only if the economy performs much more poorly than expected. Under another round of quantitative easing,