Tag Archives: Housing Sales Increase

Housing Keeps On the Positive Path

Great news for those looking to sell. The housing market is still showing signs of growing with no signs of stopping anytime in the near future. This is great news for those who are underwater and facing short sale scenarios or foreclosures. As prices continue to increase and demand grows it will be much easier to get those homes off to buyers without having to take a huge hit on a short sale. Home prices rose a record 12.1% in the year ending in April, the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index showed.Charleston SC real Estate SalesAccording to USAToday.com: Nationwide, 9.7 million, or 19.8% of homeowners with a mortgage, owed more on their homes than they were worth as of March, says market researcher CoreLogic. The number of underwater homeowners has dropped below 10 million for the first time in more than at least three years.Rising home prices, up 12.1% in April year-over-year, have lifted 1.7 million home loan borrowers above water in the past year, the data show. As long as home prices continue to rise it will encourage homeowners that have been struggling to put their homes back on the market. “We still have along way to go;” says Charleston, SC realtor, James Schiller. Based on median asking prices per square foot for all non-foreclosure listings on Trulia through May 2013, it found urban home prices up 11.3% year-over-year vs. 10.2% in the suburbs.“As market conditions improve across most of the country, some metros have moved onto the IMI list while marginal seasonal fluctuations have nudged others off of it,” says NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “This is to be expected as the recovery expands. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the number of improving markets is now more than three times what it was in June 2012.” While the Case-Shiller index measures prices for leading cities, data from real estate website Trulia shows prices rising nearly everywhere in the U.S., but even faster in cities than in the suburbs.Bottom line is things are moving in the right direction and struggling homeowners that have loans over what the house is worth are shrinking. They need to get with their agents to crunch the numbers and see if they can sell on the positive side.