New Home Sales Tanked 32.7% in May
New Home Sales Tanked 32.7% in May
June 23, 2010, CNNMoney.com
New home sales plummeted to a record low in May, the first month following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit. This snapped a two-month streak of gains. New home sales declined 32.7% to a seasonally adjusted rate of 300,000 last month, down from an downwardly revised 446,000 in April, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Sales year-over-year fell 18.3%. This is the slowest sales pace since the Commerce Department began tracking data in 1963. The prior record was set in September 1981, when new homes sold at an annual rate of 338,000.
The Vast Foreclosure Backlog Shrinks a Bit
June 22, 2010, Wall Street Journal
The home-foreclosure crisis will be with us for years, but here’s a small sign of progress: The number of home loans in the foreclosure process may have peaked, according to Barclays Capital in New York. In the firm’s latest Securitized Products Weekly, analyst Robert Tayon estimates that the number of homes in foreclosure was down 2.6% in April from March’s level, to 1.95 million. The number of newly delinquent loans is finally declining, and loan servicers are managing to complete more foreclosures.
Does the Housing Market Need a Pep Rally?
June 21, 2010, Wall Street Journal
When he was mayor of New York, Ed Koch was famous for asking anyone he met, “How am I doing?” Perhaps not wishing to hear the answer to that question, the Obama administration’s top housing and mortgage officials on Monday gave their own reply: We’re doing great! The Treasury and the Department of Housing and Urban Development released a new monthly “housing scorecard” in an attempt to show that the administration is making progress in its efforts to heal the market.
Calif., Fla., Other States to Get More Housing Aid
June 23, 2010, Associated Press
The Obama administration has approved five state-designed plans to help homeowners as part of a $1.5 billion effort to assist areas slammed by the housing bust. Treasury Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions had not yet been made public, said plans for Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada had received approval. The state plans are projected to help at least 93,000 homeowners. That's a small part of the administration's main existing $75 billion mortgage assistance program, which is widely viewed as a disappointment.