Recent housing indexes have shown
single-family home prices are on the rise, providing more evidence that
the “bottom” of the market is already behind.
"We’re wiping out just about all of the decline,” Joel Naroff, chief
economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, told NBC.com about recent housing
data showing home prices inching up. “It indicates the market has
turned the corner on the pricing side.”
Some recent housing indexes suggest that the “bottom” of the market
was reached in January 2012. Since that time, housing prices have been
picking up in many housing markets.
But "the turnaround in home prices was unexpected," says Patrick
Newport, an economist with IHS Global Insight. "The conventional wisdom
in February, following that landmark agreement [of the $26 billion mortgage settlement with the nation’s five largest banks],
was that we would see a surge in foreclosures of some size that would
lead to lower home prices. This surge never materialized and home prices
have turned.”
The increase in home prices is also leading to a fewer number of home
owners who are underwater on their mortgages, owing more on their
mortgage than their home is currently worth. The number of underwater
home owners fell from 12.1 million at the end of 2011 to 11.4 million at
the end of the first quarter this year, according to CoreLogic data.
Source: “Evidence Mounts that Home Prices Hit Bottom Last Winter,” NBC News (July 31, 2012)