Home Sweet Home, Insider-Tips on Minnesota real estate.

New hope on homes front

A tighter supply of new homes in metro area and a rise in permits point to growing confidence.

Once awash in brand-new houses begging for an owner, the metro area is seeing signs of a turnaround in that part of the housing market.

Read the full article by By JIM BUCHTA and JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune staff writers published in the Star Tribune

Housing Starts Increase in April

Total housing starts were at 672 thousand (SAAR) in April, up 5.8% from the revised March rate, and up 41% from the all time record low in April 2009 of 477 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in 1959).

Calculatedriskblog.com

New Home Sales

Condo starts in Q1 were just above the all time record low last quarter (4,000 vs 3,000 in Q4 2009).

With starts so low in every category, the number of units added to the housing stock in 2010 will be at a record low - and that will help reduce the significant excess inventory of housing units.

The first graph shows the NSA quarterly starts intent for four categories since 1975: single family built for sale . . . read the article in "calculatedriskblog.com"

Housing Market Outlook

Though housing prices are stabilizing, unemployment, foreclosures and a possible upward tick in interest rates have many concerned about further weakness in the housing sector. Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, talks to WSJ's Dawn Wotapka about whether he foresees a "double dip," how the expiration of the housing tax credit will affect the market, and more.

View the Wall Street Journal video

Higher lumber costs

Rising lumber prices are putting the wood to local homebuilders who are still smarting from the industry’s worst downturn in decades.

Source: Finance and Commerce  Random Lengths

U.S. Economy: New-Home Sales Decline to Record Low

(Bloomberg) -- Sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in January to the lowest level on record, a sign that an extension of a government tax credit may not be enough to rekindle demand.

Purchases declined 11 percent to an annual pace of 309,000, below the lowest forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median sales price dropped 2.4 percent from January 2009 and the supply of unsold homes increased.

Three Regions Drop

Three of the four U.S. regions showed declines in new-home sales last month, led by a 35 percent plunge in the Northeast. Purchases fell 12 percent in the West and 9.5 percent in the South. They rose 2.1 percent in the Midwest.

The median price of a new home in the U.S. decreased to $203,500 in January, the lowest since December 2003, from $208,600 in the same month last year.

Rising foreclosures are the main threat to a sustained housing recovery. A record 3 million U.S. homes will be repossessed by lenders this year as unemployment and depressed home values leave borrowers unable to make their house payments or sell, according to a RealtyTrac Inc. forecast last month. Last year there were 2.82 million foreclosures, the most since the Irvine, California-based company began compiling data in 2005.

To contact the report on this story: Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net

More New Homes Contain Life-Threatening Defects

Quality Built's study of new homes and condos in 27 states, constructed by more than 900 different builders, commonly found window flashing problems, improper roofing, missing structural hardware and other defects to be more prevalent in the eastern and southern states.

That indicates new home quality has worsened since 2004 when Consumer Reports' Housewrecked reported, based on scores of interviews with home owners, builders, inspectors, industry representatives, government officials, and lawyers, that as many as 15 percent of all new homes sold -- 150,000 a year -- had a serious defects.

The single highest risk problems identified in single-family homes included improper framing around windows and doors (a structural issue), building paper and house wrap installation flaws (moisture intrusion and energy loss) and missing structural connections, a major hazard.

Realty Times