Is the Housing Market Looking Up?

By Liz Clinger Updated on 7/9/2012

According to the most recent housing scorecard from the Obama administration, HUD and U.S. Treasury, home equity has reached an uptick of 7.4% between last years fourth quarter and this year’s first quarter of which it reached upwards of $457.1 billion dollars, the highest amount since early mid-2010.

Another indicator of a higher stability in the housing market is resale of homes reached upwards 9.6% this May, over last May’s numbers. Sales of newly built homes reached a high not seen in the last two years.

The housing fact sheet shows data from the NAR with 30-year fixed rate mortgage interest rates reaching 3.66%, well below the percentage average this time last year at 4.51% and the highs of December 2010 of 5.10%.

According to HUD and the National Association of Realtors data, new home sales also showed favorable increases in the recent report, with 30,800 new homes sold over last year’s sales of 25,600. Existing home sales were up over year ago numbers, reaching 378,200 over 345,800.

Although this positive news does indicate good feelings towards the recovery of the housing market, some areas are still questionable for recovery, for example; higher numbers of foreclosure starts and completions in May in certain markets show still shaky territories.

Also showing still unsavory looks into the market are the numbers of underwater homeowners, reported by CoreLogic, there is an increase over the 10.7 million from the previous period and 11 million from last year, reaching a high 11.1 million.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage originations are also showing a decline from the previous report, with 1.219 million under the last survey’s numbers of 1.253 million, although still up from a year ago numbers of 918,000.

RealtyTrac’s report of foreclosure sales and notices of default show an increase as well, with 66,300 notices of default in last periods numbers, higher than the 58,800 this time last year, and notices of foreclosure sale increased from 77,500 in the last report to reach 84,900, though still down from this time last year’s numbers of 89,300.

With several indicators of the housing market stabilizing in certain areas, even with the unfavorable foreclosure data, it seems that we may look positively towards the market for the time being.