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US Real Estate Ready to Bounce

26 April 2012 09:07 (UTC +04:00)

â€ŽBaku - APA-Economics. The US housing market is showing some signs of stabilization as price declines ease, and demand improves, causing some US economists to call a â€œBottomâ€ in the worst real estate collapse since the 1930â€²s, Live Trading News reported.

â€œThe crash is over,â€ Moodyâ€™s Analytics Chief Economist, Mark Zandi, said in a interview that the â€œCrash is over.â€ He went on to say that home sales, both new and existing, and housing starts are now off the â€œBottom.â€

Data released yesterday by the US government showed better-than-estimated new-home sales and a slowdown in price declines are bolstering optimism that the market is poised for a sustainable recovery.

Economists are predicting prices are close to the â€œBottom of the Curveâ€ after a 35% slump from a July 2006 high, even as the threat of more foreclosures loom to enlarge the supply.

Values in 20 US cities fell 3.5% in February, the smallest 12-month drop since February 2011, the S&P/Case-Shiller index showed Tuesday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agencyâ€™s home-price index, which measures properties with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, had a 0.4% rise for the same period, according to a separate report.

New US homes sold at an annual pace of 328,000 in March, + 7.5% from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said.

The median estimate in a news media survey forecast a rate of 319,000. The pace of sales for February was revised upward to 353,000, a 2 yr high.

A report on consumer confidence yesterday showed the most important signal that housing can only go up. The Conference Board said its confidence index was at 69.2 in April, compared with a revised 69.5 in March.

Beneath the headline number, an important indicator was that consumers said jobs are easier to find, .
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) will likely say Thursday that the number of Americans signing contracts to buy previously owned homes rose 1% in March, according to the median estimate of 43 economists surveyed. That puts the pending home-sales index close to a 2-yr high.
Robert Shiller, a Yale University economics professor and co-creator of the Case-Shiller home-price index, said prices may be poised to fall further.