Housing Crisis over!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-29/foreclosure-wave-averted-as-doomsayers-defied-mortgages.html When banks pulled back on foreclosures two years ago following a government investigation into allegations of faulty practices, market researchers, academics and Wall Street analysts said that a surge of delinquent homes would deluge the U.S. market once lenders resolved the claims and worked... [more]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-29/foreclosure-wave-averted-as-doomsayers-defied-mortgages.html When banks pulled back on foreclosures two years ago following a government investigation into allegations of faulty practices, market researchers, academics and Wall Street analysts said that a surge of delinquent homes would deluge the U.S. market once lenders resolved the claims and worked through backlog, driving down prices for years to come In fact, the flood failed to materialize, even after the five biggest U.S. mortgage servicers reached a $25 billion settlement with federal and state regulators in February. Instead, the number of properties for sale shrank to the fewest in a decade, prices appreciated at the fastest pace since 2005, and the gradual healing of the housing market helped boost consumer confidence and the economy. Home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose 3 percent in September from a year earlier, the most since 2010, the S&P/Case-Shiller index showed this week. An index of pending home resales climbed 5.2 percent in October, exceeding the highest estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. The median price of an existing home sold last month jumped 11 percent from a year earlier to $178,600, the steepest annual increase since November 2005, according to the group. The number of previously owned homes on the market in October fell 1.4 percent to 2.14 million, the fewest since December 2002. The so-called shadow inventory of pending foreclosures, which may be larger than the visible supply of previously owned homes for sale, is shrinking as new defaults decline and banks work through their backlog of bad loans. Home loans that were more than 90 days late or in the foreclosure process, a proxy for the shadow inventory, fell to 7.03 percent of properties with a mortgage in the third quarter, the lowest share since 2008, the Mortgage Bankers Association said two weeks ago. [less]