There doesn’t seem to be a lot of good news when it comes to real estate within the U.S. It’s not all terrible information on that front though. It turns out that U.S. home prices are rising, if only slightly, for the last few consecutive months. There was an increase in costs over June 2010, and home values are monitored by the Case Shiller Price Index. Great news is hard to come by in real estate. It is one of probably the most negatively affected markets during the economic recession.
Property prices rise ever so fairly
20 cities are used to average out home prices by Standard and Poor’s Case Shiller price index. Home prices increased by 4.4 percent, as outlined by the New York Times, over second quarter of 2010. The first quarter of this fiscal year saw a fall in home prices of 2.8 percent. Also, home prices for second quarter of 2010 are 3.6 percent higher than for second quarter of 2009. Rates rose 1 percent during July.
The hook is
Along with the rise in home prices, sales are trending downward. The lapse of the homebuyer tax credit led to sales falling off immediately. Home prices are likely to fall soon, also. Economist Karl Case (for whom the index is named) said that while some of the data was good, a stabilization of financial markets had not occurred yet, as outlined by Bloomberg. Case believes that the market is going to take another year or so before it stabilizes and starts to improve.
Not really the most detrimental news ever
The bottom line is that the homebuyer tax credit gave a momentary, which is to say artificial, boost to house sales, and also home prices. True activity in real estate can’t resume until there is not anything keeping activity up or down. However, on the plus side, things are better than they were a year ago.
Find more details on this subject
Bloomberg
bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-31/karl-case-sees-a-lot-of-positive-stuff-in-housing-price-data-tom-keene.html
NY Times
nytimes.com/2010/09/01/business/economy/01econ.html?partner=rss and emc=rss
