Economy

The National Association of Home Builders has added Harrisonburg to its Improving Markets Index, which “tracks housing markets throughout the country that are showing signs of improving economic health.”

It’s the first Virginia city to make the list, which hit a nice, round 100 metropolitan areas.

CoreLogic’s March 2012 Home Price Index finds that, nationwide, prices dropped from year to year — but only by six-tenths of a percent.

They also increased 0.6% from February to March. Normally I ignore month-to-month numbers, but what’s notable about this is that it’s the first month-to-month increase since July 2011.

Read more over at Calculated Risk.

One of the issues facing the housing market in the next few years will be, oddly enough, student loans. With the cost of education rising, a lot of 20- and 30-somethings are spending a good chunk of their income paying them off. That’s one reason many may not buy a home as quickly as they might have a few years ago.

As Bloomberg put it in “‘Explosion in Student Debt’ Drags Down Housing“:

As the cost of attending U.S. colleges and universities surges, student-loan debt is turning into “a significant drag on the housing market,” according to Pierre Lapointe, a Brockhouse & Cooper Inc. strategist.

So what happens when a lot of people lose their homes to foreclosures and short sales? And a lot more find they don’t qualify for a mortgage? They rent, obviously.

And when demand for rentals goes up, what happens? Anyone? Yes, you in the back.

That’s right: Prices go up.

And that’s exactly what’s happening, reports the LA Times, in “Rents soar as foreclosure victims, young workers seek housing.”

 Here’s a bit of good news, for those of you who do a lot of city driving: Gas prices in the US are down to an average of $3.85 a gallon — 15 and a half cents lower than last year.

As I said in my post the other day, the reason I believe the housing recovery is already in swing is, well, a lot of small reasons. One after another, bits of good news keep showing up.

Today, for example, Realogy (owner of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA, and others) announced that its revenue was up and it’s net loss was down for the first quarter, “as the housing market showed signs of stabilization.”

“Housing analysts at Bank of America say the nation’s homeownership rate will decline further,” reports Housing Wire. “The rate will eventually fall to about 63 percent and remain there, they say.” (The current US home ownership rate is 65.4 percent.)

 Well that settles that, doesn’t it?

Do people really believe they can predict something like that? Seriously? It’s one thing to say that, thanks to foreclosures, home ownership is likely to go down further. But to actually try to name a number?

“Renters Really Prefer Owning, Builder Survey Says,” says the Wall Street Journal. I grabbed that immediately — looked like a good, positive story.

Unfortunately, the survey the story is based on doesn’t really say that.

Sayeth the Journal:

A survey from PulteGroup — one of the nation’s largest home builders — has found a surprising result: Many renters want to buy homes.

But PulteGroup actually said:

As we told you the other day, all the hubbub about shadow inventory — a flood of foreclosures and distressed sales coming down the pike — looks to have been a tempest in a teapot and much ado about nothing. A mountain out of a molehill, if you will.

The Wall Street Journal has a piece, “That New Foreclosure Tsunami? Still Waiting” in which it points out that the fears seem unjustified: