In-depth look into NJ’s foreclosure situation

Posted on July 19, 2015 by grim

From the Record:

Fuller impact of home foreclosure debacle hits N.J.

The number of New Jersey home repossessions by lenders has soared in the past two years and is on track to increase again in 2015, in sharp divergence to the national trend.

Completed foreclosures, where banks and mortgage companies have taken the homes, climbed 34 percent in the state last year, to about 5,780, after an 11 percent surge in 2013, according to The Record’s analysis of RealtyTrac data. By contrast, on the national level, completed foreclosures fell by double digits in each of the past three years.

In the first three months of this year, Bergen County was on pace to nearly double last year’s total of sheriff’s auction sales with 201 properties sold.

A CoreLogic report released Tuesday showed that in May 4.9 percent of mortgaged homes in New Jersey were completed foreclosures, the top rate in the country. The percentage of homes where the mortgages are seriously delinquent also was the highest at 8.4 percent.

The statistics indicate the foreclosure debacle, which has eased in other states following the housing meltdown that began in 2007, may only now be peaking in New Jersey, where foreclosures had been crawling through the system.

The reasons for the slow processing include a state judiciary that has tried harder than other states to hold banks accountable for illegal and improper paperwork. Also, New Jersey’s non-profit housing groups, which have support in the state Legislature, have worked to help keep homeowners in their homes. It has taken debt collectors about two years and 10 months on average from the time an initial notice is delivered until the property is repossessed, according to real estate information company RealtyTrac. Only Hawaii’s process is longer.

Now repossessions are moving faster. According to housing activists and lawyers who defend homeowners faced with foreclosure, the acceleration has coincided with a pickup in the real estate market. Although bankers deny it, homeowner advocates say that uptick seems to have made banks more eager to complete foreclosures, cash out and recover what they can from their losses.

“There have been secondary-market buyers coming in as a reaction to the housing market starting to rebound a bit,” said Adam Deutsch, a lawyer with Denbeaux & Denbeaux in Westwood, which has defended hundreds of New Jersey homeowners in contested foreclosures.
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New Jersey has throughout the foreclosure debacle had a lower home-repossession rate than most states when measured as a percentage of the total number of homes. Last year, for example, the state ranked 30th, with about one in 350 homes going all the way through the repossession process, according to an analysis of RealtyTrac data. Nationwide, the rate in 2014 was about one in 225 homes.

Bankers tend to blame the courts, lawmakers and housing activists for the state’s inability to clean up its foreclosure mess in a timely fashion. They say homeowner assistance programs have delayed the inevitable.

“This [surge in repossessions] represents the ones that should have been completed years ago,” said Michael Affuso, director of government relations for the New Jersey Bankers Association.
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Homeowners facing foreclosure often stay in their homes without making any mortgage payments for years as the process drags on, partly because lenders refuse to accept partial payments once a loan is in default.

But it’s not a free ride for the homeowner. Missed interest payments and late fees, as well as arrears in taxes and insurance, typically are added to what is owed.

Bankers are reluctant to speak on the record about their foreclosure practices. “It is a politically sensitive and customer-sensitive issue,” one industry veteran said. But regulatory filings by publicly traded lenders offer some insight into the effect the surge in homeowner defaults has had on these companies.
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Homes in foreclosure continue to be a drag on New Jersey’s housing recovery, and the sooner they are sold to buyers who want to live in them, or to investors who want to resell them or rent them, the better, said the New Jersey Bankers Association’s Affuso.

“This is a nightmare for a bank,” Affuso said. “They’ve already written the loans down and they want to get rid of them.”
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Even so, there were nearly 49,000 new foreclosure complaints filed statewide last year, the most since 2010, according to data from the Office of Foreclosure. The counties with the highest numbers last year were Essex, Camden, Ocean, Middlesex and Bergen, in that order.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Affuso said. “We are closer to the next recession than we are from the last recession and there are still about 85,000 properties in foreclosure, and probably 40 percent are older than 2013.”

Posted in Foreclosures, New Jersey Real Estate, Risky Lending | 119 Comments

Hammers start swinging again

Posted on July 18, 2015 by grim

From Bloomberg:

Housing Starts in U.S. Surge to Second-Highest Level Since 2007

New-home construction in the U.S. climbed in June to the second-highest level since November 2007 as builders stepped up work on apartment projects.

Housing starts rose 9.8 percent to a 1.17 million annualized rate from a revised 1.07 million in May that was stronger than previously estimated, figures from the Commerce Department showed Friday in Washington. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg was a 1.11 million rate. Ground-breaking on multifamily dwellings jumped 29.4 percent.

Building permits for single and multifamily properties, a gauge of future construction, climbed to an almost eight-year high, the report showed. Steady job gains, low mortgage rates and a gradual easing of lending standards are propelling sales, indicating housing will become a bigger source of strength for the economy.

“They’re pretty positive numbers,” said Lewis Alexander, chief economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. “You’ve got decent employment growth that’s been particularly good for young people, you’ve got relatively low interest rates, somewhat easing of credit standard — all of those things are helping.”

Estimates for housing starts in the Bloomberg survey of 76 economists ranged from 1.03 million to 1.23 million. The May figure was revised up from 1.04 million.

The gain in starts of multifamily homes followed a 16.9 percent decrease the previous month and a 37.5 percent April surge. Data on these projects, which have led housing starts in recent years, can be volatile.
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Applications to begin work on single-family projects rose to 687,000 in June, the most since January 2008. Permits for construction of apartments and other multifamily dwellings rose 15.3 percent after a 20 percent jump the previous month.

Posted in Housing Recovery, National Real Estate, New Development | 26 Comments

NJ loses jobs, unemployment rate tumbles to 6.1%

Posted on July 17, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

N.J. sheds 7,400 jobs in June as construction industry shrinks

New Jersey lost more than 7,000 jobs in June with the biggest employment loss posted in the construction industry, according to new labor data released on Thursday.

The state’s unemployment rate, which is measured by a different survey, fell last month to 6.1 percent, its lowest level since October 2008. That’s down from 6.5 percent in May but still above the national rate of 5.3 percent.

A total of 7,400 jobs were lost in June, the data shows, including 5,700 private sector positions.

The construction industry took the biggest hit last month, with a job loss of 4,600, according to the federal data released by the state labor department. Education and health services lost 3,000 jobs in June and 2,700 jobs were eliminated in professional and business services.

The sectors that saw job growth in June include leisure and hospitality, which added 2,000 jobs. The information sector also added 1,900 jobs and manufacturing added 1,600 jobs.

June’s job losses follow a month where the state gained roughly 10,000 jobs. New Jersey has now added 41,600 jobs in total since last June.

Posted in Economics, Employment, New Jersey Real Estate | 55 Comments

Shocking: Expectations between the dumb and the blind don’t align

Posted on July 16, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

Chasm developing between homeowner, appraiser opinions

Appraiser home value opinions fell further below homeowner estimates in June, marking the fifth consecutive month of this trend at the national level, according to Quicken Loans.

Appraiser opinions of home values were 1.4% lower than homeowner estimates, according to Quicken Loans’ monthly national Home Price Perception Index.

Quicken Loans’ national Home Value Index (HVI) reported a slight increase of 0.74% in June, with home values increasing in all regions of the country except for the South, which posted a decline of 0.09%. National home values are up 4.38% from the year prior.

June marks the fifth consecutive month appraisers have estimated home values below homeowner estimates. During this five-month period, the gap between homeowner and appraiser estimates has increased each month, with an average 1.4% difference in June.

“Over the last five months we’ve seen homeowners continually value their homes higher than appraisers,” said Bob Walters, Quicken Loans chief economist. “While each local market has a different story to tell, a large part of this perception gap is likely due to the normalization of home prices. After about a year of home values trending upward, it takes some time for many homeowners to realize home values are stabilizing in their neighborhoods.”
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“Home prices seem to be a bit frozen for the time being – validating that we are in a market that is well into the stabilization cycle,” said Walters. “The real test for home price solidity will be when inventory increases to a level of equilibrium between supply and demand.”

Posted in Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 116 Comments

Lonely at the top

Posted on July 15, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

N.J. has largest share of homes in foreclosure, report shows

A greater share of homes in New Jersey are facing foreclosure than anywhere else in the country, according to a report released Tuesday morning.

The report from the Irvine, Calif.-based firm CoreLogic shows 4.9 percent of mortgaged homes in New Jersey were in the foreclosure process in May, which is nearly quadruple the national rate of 1.3 percent. In May 2014, 5.8 percent of mortgaged homes in New Jersey were in foreclosure, compared to 1.7 percent of homes nationwide.

New Jersey has been dealing with a backlog of foreclosures, which are slowly winding their way through the state’s judicial process.

New York (3.7 percent), Florida (2.9 percent), Hawaii (2.5 percent) and the District of Columbia (2.4 percent) also have among the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, according the CoreLogic report.

Roughly 9,200 foreclosures were completed in New Jersey over the last year, according to the report, up from more than 6,300 completed foreclosure in the year ending in May 2014. That’s counter to the national trend. The number of completed foreclosures declined between those time frames 595,000 to roughly 528,000.

Posted in Foreclosures, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 140 Comments

Philly – Hottest SFH Market in 10 Years

Posted on July 14, 2015 by grim

From the Inquirer:

Phila. single-family home prices, sales volume soar in 2Q, data show

In the spring, Philadelphia’s single-family housing market had its best quarter in a decade, with prices and sales volume surging throughout the city.

The average house value “soared” by 7.3 percent in 2015’s second quarter compared with the first three months of the year, said Kevin Gillen, chief economist of Meyers Research and senior research fellow at Drexel University’s Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation.

Based on single-family home sales data between April 1 and June 30 from the city Recorder of Deeds, Gillen said, the quarterly price rise was the largest since second quarter 2005, at the height of the real estate boom.

“With this increase, average Philadelphia house prices are up 5.4 percent from where they were a year ago, and 14.4 percent since their bottom in the first quarter of 2012,” said Gillen, who tracks the real estate market throughout the Philadelphia area. (His analysis of second-quarter sales in the region will be available in two to three weeks.)

Spring 2015’s median price of $138,600 was up 18 percent from $117,500 in the previous quarter, and 20 percent higher than the $115,000 median of second-quarter 2014, Gillen said. (The report did not include sales of condos, which he defines as multifamily housing.)

Every city neighborhood saw an increase in price – the first time that has occurred since second quarter 2013, he noted.

“It is the hottest market I’ve seen in more than 10 years,” said Carol McCann, an agent with Re/Max Millennium in Fox Chase.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 112 Comments

First sign of cracks in the mega-landlord model

Posted on July 13, 2015 by grim

From Bloomberg:

Blackstone Selling 1,300 Atlanta Houses in Strategy Shift

Blackstone Group LP’s Invitation Homes, after spending more than $9 billion in a U.S. property-buying spree, is starting to sell some houses as it shifts focus from rapid expansion to fine-tuning its holdings.

The housing landlord has agreed to sell about 1,300 Atlanta-area residences that don’t fit its strategy, which targets communities with higher rents and quality schools, according to Chief Executive Officer John Bartling. The transaction would be the biggest bulk sale for the 3-year-old company, the largest U.S. owner of single-family homes.

“It’s that stage in our lives where we’re now in a position of looking at dispositions as an active part of portfolio balance,” Bartling said in an interview. “You should expect us to sell 5 percent of our portfolio every year.”

Blackstone led private equity firms, hedge funds and other large investors in buying thousands of houses after the real estate crash, creating a new asset class of single-family rentals. With the market recovering, landlords are seeking ways to increase profitability by raising rents and making operations more efficient. For Invitation Homes, paring its portfolio may also help it in preparation for a potential initial public offering, which Blackstone has said it could be ready for in the next two years.
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Most of the Atlanta houses in the sale are worth less than the average Blackstone-owned home. Lower-value properties tend to have higher vacancy, turnover and capital spending rates, according to Brian Grow, managing director in the credit-ratings unit of Morningstar Inc.

“The lower-value properties are much higher touch,” Grow said. “If you own a huge portfolio nationwide and you want consistency on how you manage the properties and you don’t want as high touch, I think the higher-value properties can be beneficial.”

Posted in Economics, National Real Estate | 88 Comments

Seems that everyone is taking shots at Jersey lately…

Posted on July 11, 2015 by grim

From Realtor.com (yes, realtor.com):

More Bad News for New Jersey? Or Is It Good News for the Middle Class?

If we can’t blame New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the traffic jams, maybe he can’t take the hit for this news either: While home prices are spiking in the rest of the country, in the home state of Tony Soprano, they’re still more than 20% below the 2006 peak, according to a report from CoreLogic.

No, it’s not that people are stuck in traffic and can’t get to the open houses, or that too many goodfellas are getting whacked. It’s that the number of foreclosed properties is high (8.12% according to the Mortgage Bankers Association).

Is it just that those “Joisey” folk live waaaaay beyond their means (Hello, Teresa Giudice!)? Not entirely. It’s a kind of stagnation.

“People are both unwilling to list their homes and are unwilling to buy, in many cases, because they fear that their prices will be undercut when these distressed mortgages finally go to market,” said economic researcher Patrick O’Keefe of CohnReznick in Roseland. New Jersey’s population growth is also to blame. It’s half the national average, which in turn keeps the demand to buy a home down.

To be fair to the Garden State (so called, the joke goes, because “Oil, Petroleum, Nuclear, Landfill, and Toxic Waste State” didn’t fit on a license plate), home prices are rising (3% from the year before—about a $150,000 average sales price at last count).

And that’s actually good news, at least for home buyers: Perhaps New Jersey, despite its record high income taxes, can maintain its place as the everyman’s state, and can be one of the last refuges for the middle class in the New York City area.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 47 Comments

Brooklyn hits record highs

Posted on July 10, 2015 by grim

From Crains NY:

Brooklyn housing boom pushes sale prices and rentals to new highs

Rents and home prices reached record levels in Brooklyn during the second quarter of 2015, according to a market report released Thursday.

The average sale price for a Brooklyn home reached a record $788,529 during the second quarter, according to a report by Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The price inched above the previous high-water mark the same time last year by $5,233. Historically low inventory, a lack of new product being built and tight credit conditions contributed to the increase.

As a consequence, many people who would have purchased a home continued to rent, especially in popular Brooklyn neighborhoods. That pushed median rent in the northwestern portion of Brooklyn, which runs from Greenpoint and Williamsburg down through Park Slope, to an all-time high of $2,964 a month.

“Whether you’re renting or buying, you’re looking at higher housing costs,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel, the firm that prepared Douglas Elliman’s report. “As a general rule, this is not necessarily a good thing for a city that is creating jobs, because the people who fill them might not be able to afford to live here.”

Granted, Brooklyn did record a 35% increase in the supply of for-sale homes compared with the same period last year, according to a report from the Corcoran Group. But those apartments came on the market after three quarters of declining inventory, and were being snapped up at a historically high pace, only sitting on the market for an average 71 days.

Meanwhile in Manhattan, the median rent rose 2.1% to $3,369 a month in the second quarter, according to the Douglas Elliman report. And just last week, a flurry of market reports noted that the average sale price there also reached an all-time high.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Housing Recovery, NYC | 109 Comments

HUD to tell you who you are permitted to live next to

Posted on July 9, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

HUD’s social engineering is coming to your neighborhood

Look out American neighborhoods, you’re about to get engineered good and hard.

Why? Because market pricing is now considered discrimination.

In fact, any neighborhood that doesn’t meet with the approval of a demographic spreadsheet model in the bowels of some government bureaucrat’s office is considered discrimination.
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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a final rule today for the “affirmatively furthering fair housing program” but the debate is far from being final.

Under the program, the federal government will collect large sums of personal data on the makeup of neighborhoods throughout the country searching for evidence of “disparities by race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or disability in access to community assets” — even though there is no evidence of actual discrimination. And, in fact, such discrimination has been illegal since 1968.

Those communities that don’t fit the demographic models — let’s be frank here, they’re quotas — of “What Should Be” will have to be re-engineered by the smarter minds that are federal government bureaucrats. (What do you know about your own neighborhood? They know better.)

Those communities that don’t measure up to the spreadsheets will be targeted for correction, using billions in grants, as well as government blackmail (think how highway funds are used to bully states) to change their zoning, so that neighborhoods full of successful, prosperous people who worked to build their homes and their peaceful communities will be forced to welcome neighbors who haven’t worked for it, and who don’t value it.

Welcome to Fair Housing 2015, where market pricing is discrimination.
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According to the Obama administration’s own wording, “housing choices continue to be constrained through housing discrimination, the operation of housing markets, [and] investment choices by holders of capital.”

There it is. Right there. Sounds like Piketty or Marx, but it’s the White House.

Not in black and white, but in green — as in the color of money and the color of envy.

This is social engineering at its worst, and a violation of basic local zoning and (trigger warning) freedom of association.

Also, consider that they want to eliminate neighborhoods that they say have a demographic imbalance. Well, by that logic, we’d never have any Little Italy’s, Chinatowns, or any other ethnic enclaves that celebrate cultures. Gone is the revival by middle and upper-class black people in places like Harlem in New York and Oak Cliff in my own Dallas. No more Koreatown, no more Little Mexico. So much for celebrating diversity.
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With any luck, the next administration, Democrat or Republican, will reject this class-warfare attack on “discrimination by the holders of capital.” But democracy isn’t exactly the best bulwark for preserving freedom and free markets.

As H.L. Mencken said, and from which I borrowed for my lede, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Well, here it comes again. You’re about to be bureaucratically and culturally enriched.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, New Jersey Real Estate, Politics | 132 Comments

Finally a good time to sell?

Posted on July 8, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

Consumer attitudes on housing signal healthier purchase market ahead

Americans’ outlook toward the current home selling market and the future of home rental prices may bode well for purchase activity this year, according to results from Fannie Mae’s June 2015 National Housing Survey.

Amid continued strong job and income growth, consumers are looking more favorably on the current selling climate, perhaps portending an uptick in the existing home supply.

“Our June survey results show the positive impact on housing of job and income growth,” said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae. “The expectation of higher rents is a natural outgrowth of increasing household formation by newly employed individuals putting upward pressure on rental rates. A complementary rise in the good time to sell measure suggests that limited inventory, which is putting upward pressure on house prices, gives an increasing advantage to sellers.

“Together, these results point to a healthier home purchase market, with more renters likely to find owning to be more cost-effective than renting and more sellers likely to put their homes on the market,” Duncan said.

Among those surveyed, the share who believe now is a good time to sell a home reached a new survey high, increasing three percentage points to 52% and crossing the 50-percent threshold for the first time in the survey’s history. At the same time, the share who said they expect home rental prices to go up in the next 12 months rose four percentage points to 59%, also an all-time survey high.
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Here are some highlights:

The average 12-month home price change expectation fell to 2.6%.

The share of respondents who say home prices will go up in the next 12 months fell to 47%. The share who say home prices will go down rose to 7%.

The share of respondents who say mortgage rates will go up in the next 12 months rose 3 percentage points to 50%.

Those who say it is a good time to buy a house fell to 63% – tying a survey low – while those who say it is a good time to sell rose to 52% – a new survey high.

The average 12-month rental price change expectation fell to 4.2%.

The percentage of respondents who expect home rental prices to go up rose to 59% – a new survey high.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 164 Comments

NJ 23th largest economy in the world

Posted on July 7, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

N.J.’s economy would crack world’s Top 25 if it was its own country, report says

New Jersey’s economic growth fared worse than nearly every other state in the nation last year.

But the state’s gross domestic product is roughly the same size as Poland’s, according to a map created by an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.

The gross domestic product in New Jersey grew by 0.4 percent in 2014, federal data shows, to roughly $504 billion. That increase ranked New Jersey 46th nationwide. Only Maine, Virginia, Mississippi and Alaska had lower rates of growth last year.

Using data on gross domestic products from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the International Monetary Fund, Mark J. Perry, the editor of the Carpe Diem blog for American Enterprise Institute, matched the economic output of states to those of countries and mapped the results.

“It’s pretty amazing how ridiculously large the US economy is, and the map above helps put America’s GDP of nearly $18 trillion in 2014 into perspective by comparing the GDP of US states to other country’s entire national GDP,” Perry wrote in a June 10 blog post .

California’s $2.31 trillion in economic output in 2014 is just short of Brazil’s gross domestic product in the same year, according to Perry, while Texas is about equal to Canada and New York is similar to Spain.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, New Jersey Real Estate | 95 Comments

The difference between NJ and CA real estate

Posted on July 6, 2015 by grim

In NJ, if you have a stalker you can’t sell the house. In SF, if you find a dead body during the home inspection, nobody cares.

From HousingWire:

Corpse found in $1M San Francisco house for sale – Price could go higher

A mummified corpse of the homeowner was found in a Lake District Victorian house for sale in San Francisco, according to an article from SocketSite.

The article explained that the homeowner’s daughter, who was living in the house, was a hoarder.

Despite all this, the home still received a bid of $1 million, and the final price could go higher.

As the mother’s death was never reported, the sale will require court confirmation. And while the $1,029,500 bid for the house has tentatively been accepted, interested parties will have an opportunity to bid higher at the probate hearing for the estate, the date for which has yet to be scheduled.

Posted in Humor | 90 Comments

Yeah, New Jersey stinks. Stinks like money.

Posted on July 4, 2015 by grim

I hear people complain about the drive up or down 95, it stinks, dark and dank industrial wasteland. Miles and miles of warehouse, factory, smokestacks, power plants, shipping containers, garbage dumps.

It’s beautiful.

You can keep your scenic roadways and parks, we’ll keep the industry that makes us the one of the most economically productive areas in the entire world, and one of the wealthiest areas in the world.

Where do people think jobs come from? Where manufacturing takes place? Where shipping and trade happen? In quaint downtowns with pretty tree lined streets? On fancy dot com campuses with rainbow slides and sleeping pods? Get real you idiots.

Next time you drive down the turnpike, open your eyes and revel in the economic powerhouse that is not only critical to the Northeast, but the entire United States. Want to see the greatest wonder of the new economic world? Drive through the Northeast corridor of the US, the one where we’re at the heart.

By the way, stay the f*ck out if you don’t like us.

From CBS:

New Jersey Residents: Poll Ranking State As Nation’s Least Likeable ‘Stinks’

A recent poll was not winning too many fans in New Jersey Friday, after it ranked the Garden State dead last in favorability among the 50 states.

As CBS2’s Dave Carlin reported, those who really know New Jersey praise the people as great, and the real estate as prime – with beautiful sights like the waterfalls in Nutley.

But others dismiss the state as a land of mobsters and grime.

“I don’t think the Sopranos helped the state of New Jersey,” said Charles Derios of Newark.

Indeed, Hollywood stereotypes got the blame for the poll results from YouGov that slammed the Garden State as the place to hate.
The survey asked Americans to rate the states, and New Jersey came dead last – as least likable of 50.

In fact, New Jersey was the only state for which more respondents had an unfavorable opinion than a favorable one. Forty percent of poll respondents rated New Jersey unfavorably, and 30 percent rated the state favorably – giving the state a net favorability rating of minus 10 percent, according to YouGov.

A YouGov article on the poll said the state has an image problem in popular cuture.

“The popular image of New Jersey often falls somewhere between the MTV show ‘Jersey Shore,’ HBO’s award winning mafia drama ‘The Sopranos’ and the chemical plants and gray industrial landscape stretched along I-95 that inspired much of the work of Bruce Springsteen,” Peter Moore wrote for YouGov.
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Dwayne Quinn of New Orleans spoke to 1010 WINS’ Al Jones on Thursday about the poll. He said there simply isn’t much in New Jersey.

“I mean I’ve heard it as the armpit capital of the world or even the butt crack capital of the world. You know, there’s not much that attracts,” he said.

But one New Jersey resident responded, “I think it stinks.”

Posted in Humor, New Jersey Real Estate | 77 Comments

NY Metro Home Prices up 2.8% in April

Posted on July 3, 2015 by grim

From the Record:

Region’s home prices tick up 2.8%

As the housing market continues to recover, single-family home prices in the New York metropolitan area ticked up 2.8 percent in the year that ended in April, the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indexes reported Tuesday.

Nationally, prices rose 4.2 percent, according to Case-Shiller.

Home prices in the region are back to the levels of July 2004 and remain about 18.7 percent below their peaks in mid-2006, according to Case-Shiller Nationally, home values are at the levels of autumn 2004, about 14 percent to 16 percent below their peaks.

“Home prices continue to rise across the country, but the pace is not accelerating,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement. “Recent housing data is positive. Sales of new and existing homes are rising, and construction of new homes enjoyed strong gains in May.”

Prices in the region didn’t fall as far as national averages during the housing crash, so they have not rebounded as quickly as the market has recovered. In addition, home values in New Jersey are under downward pressure from a large backlog of distressed properties heading into foreclosure. And New Jersey’s job market has been slower to heal after the recession than the national employment market, which has limited the ability of many families to buy homes. New Jersey’s unemployment rate of 6.5 percent is a full percentage point above the national rate.

Case-Shiller does not break out home values by county, but according to New Jersey Realtors, single-family prices in Bergen County were a median $462,500 in April, up 6.9 percent from April 2014. The median in Passaic was $282,250, up 3.8 percent from a year earlier.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Employment, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 54 Comments