Archinect - News

U.S. home prices reach record 19.7% gain in July

2021-09-30T17:20:00-04:00

U.S. home prices surged 19.7% in July, once again posting the biggest jump in more than 30 years. The record gain in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values nationwide followed a 18.7% jump in June and was the 14th straight month of accelerating price increases.

A measure of prices in 20 cities posted a 19.9% gain in July, up from 19.1% the previous month. Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle reported the highest year-over-year gains, with 32.4%, 27.8%, and 25.5% increases, respectively.

“The last several months have been extraordinary not only in the level of price gains but in the consistency of gains across the country,” said Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P DJI, in a statement.

“July’s 19.7% price gain for the National Composite is the highest reading in more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data,” Lazzara continued. “This month, New York joined Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle in recording their all-time highest 12-month gains.”

S&P DJI believes these dramatic gains are due in part to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has fueled the demand for suburban homes. However, pre-exi...

Housing markets around the world are increasingly synchronized

2020-01-29T14:06:00-05:00

Even though homes aren’t tradable, like soybeans or car parts, home prices across the world have become increasingly synchronized. This reflects a variety of factors, according to the [International Monetary Fund], including the increasing tendency for economic growth and interest rates to move in parallel across nations.

An interesting report from Sarah Chaney of The Wall Street Journal illuminates some of the ways in which housing markets across the globe—which are currently showing signs of a slowdown—are increasingly falling into line with one another as the power of the global economy continues apace following the Great Recession.

One reason, according to the report, is that following 2008, many major economies took to reducing interest rates as a way of spurring new investment. Chaney writes, "In the period of low interest rates following the global financial crisis, wealthy investors in the hunt for better yields swooped in to buy properties in major financial hubs. In effect, residential prices in those cities have become globally synchronized much as stocks and bonds are."

U.S. home prices continue to surge while sales drop slightly

2019-07-25T07:00:00-04:00

With affordable homes already in short supply around the U.S., house-hunters this spring faced another challenge: surging prices. Median home prices in the second quarter surged to a record high $266,000 for single family-homes and condos, according to a recent report from property research firm ATTOM Data Solutions. That's up 6% from about $250,000 a year ago.

"U.S. homeowners who sold in the second quarter of 2019 realized an average home price gain since purchase of $67,500, up from an average gain of $57,706 in Q1 2019 and up from an average gain of $60,100 in Q2 2018," states the July ATTOM report.

The locations with the highest average home seller returns in Q2 2019 don't come as much of a surprise: San Jose, California (85.0 percent); San Francisco, California (71.6 percent); Seattle, Washington (65.6 percent); Salem, Oregon (62.3 percent); and Salt Lake City, Utah (60.7 percent).

The number of existing-home sales dropped 1.7% in June, according to recent numbers from the National Association of Realtors.

Housing shortage statistics demonstrate the cities that are still building

2017-08-29T15:03:00-04:00

Trulia isolated the markets in which building permits for residential construction are being issued at rates above historical averages, which have been calculated by looking at the number of permits issued each year between 1980 and 2016. The study also shows that Austin, Dallas and Houston, issued over 10% of all permits in the nation in 2017.These cities are projected to add about 130,000 new homes by the end of the year, their growth driven by abundant jobs and rising incomes and home prices.

According to the real estate website Trulia, the number of homes available for sale decreased 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to a year earlier, which follows decreases every quarter for the two past years.

The projected number of new building permits in 2017 grew the most in the following cities:

Austin, TX (+107.7% higher than historical average)
Charleston, SC (+72.8%)
Nashville, TN (+65.8%)
Philadelphia, PA (+62.3%)
Boston, MA (+61%)

Decreasing the most in:

Worcester, MA (-85.5%)
Allentown, PA (-85.0%)
New Haven, CT (-80.8%)
Akron, OH (-77.1%)
Syracuse, NY (-70.8%)

Car-less apartment renters pay 16% of their rent for parking that they don't use

2017-07-18T18:43:00-04:00

The average price of building a garage parking space (as much as $34,000 in 2012) is passed on to people whether they own a car or not, and distort the true demand for urban parking.

According to the 2011 National American Housing Survey data of the US census, about 16% of a housing unit’s monthly rental cost is attributable to the expense of building an urban parking spot. For the average renter that amounts to to $1,700 per year, or $142 per month.

Parking mandates increase housing prices by displacing area that could have gone to housing (thus shrinking supply), and makes each new unit more expensive to pay for more garage parking. A separate study in Los Angeles found the city’s parking minimums raised apartment prices by about $200 per month and price of a condo by about $43,000. Renters without cars end up subsidizing this arrangement to the tune of about $440 million annually in the US. While only 7% of US rental households lack cars, according to Census data, this burden falls most heavily on the urban poor since lower-income households can least afford to subsidize garage parking spaces.

Researchers find that it might be less wasteful to price and sell ...

Life After Brooklyn

2014-08-25T13:53:00-04:00

Fed up with rising rents, bidding wars and neighborhoods that no longer resemble the low-rise bohemian enclaves they found when they arrived, many Brooklynites are moving out. They include decade-long renters who can no longer keep up with price hikes, qualified buyers who have been outbid one too many times, and young families who simply can’t find the space they want at prices they can afford.

Bed-Stuy Prices Soar

2014-08-06T13:51:00-04:00

As prices rise in Brooklyn, brokers in Bedford-Stuyvesant have been breaking sales records left and right since March [...] Nine of Bed-Stuy’s top 15 residential sales in the past five years are from 2014 [...] Meanwhile, the median sales price during the second quarter rose to $630,000, up from $425,000 in the second quarter of 2013. In June of this year, the median asking price was even higher, according to StreetEasy data: $895,000, a 50.4 percent increase from June 2013.

99% v 1%: the data behind the Occupy movement

2011-11-17T13:38:30-05:00

It has been the rallying cry of the Occupy movement for the past two months - but is the US really split 99% v 1%? As poverty and inequality reach record levels, how much richer have the rich got? This animation explains what the key data says about the state of America today