Market Watch

Dwindling supply and heightened demand in Houston’s housing market have left appraisers scrambling to keep up with the area’s escalating prices, the Houston Chronicle reported. According to recent data from the Houston Association of Realtors, available housing inventory hit its lowest level in Houston in 40 years in June just as home prices hit record highs. Additionally, the average days on market before homes sold reached 46 days in June — the area’s lowest total ever. Year over year, the number of Houston listings was down 9.2 percent in June, single-family home sales were up 4.5 percent, and single-family average sales price and single-family median sales price were up 6.6 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively.

Commercial real estate markets nationally have continued to recover, according to Integra Realty Resources’ Mid-Year Viewpoint 2014, an update of the industry’s annual compendium of real estate valuation, investment and leasing trends and forecasts. The report finds that all five key property types — office, multifamily, retail, industrial and lodging — are generally undergoing a shift from the recovery to the expansion phase of the market cycle. Keep reading for the latest details on improving commercial markets.

Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes reached an important milestone in July, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index released July 16. Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for 30 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as either “good,” “fair” or “poor.” Keep reading to see how the HMI points to increasing optimism in the housing market.

Veros Real Estate Solutions, a provider of enterprise risk management solutions, collateral valuation services and predictive analytics, released a report July 15 that shows most of the country’s real estate markets are forecasted to appreciate in value during the next 12 months. Keep reading to see which metro hotbeds are expected to appreciate the most, and which markets have cooled.

CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, released its May National Foreclosure Report July 8, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic’s data, the foreclosure inventory has dropped precipitously over the last year. Keep reading for the report’s details.

CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled services provider, has released its May CoreLogic Home Price Index report. According to the HPI, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased in May compared to May 2013. This change represents 27 months of consecutive year-over-year increases in home prices nationally. On a month-over-month basis, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, also increased slightly in May compared to April. Continue reading to see the full details of the report.

New data from Trulia, an online provider of real estate information for industry professionals, shows that those still reeling from the housing bubble collapse nearly a decade ago can breathe a sigh of relief — even the most overpriced U.S. markets appear to be safe from bubble territory. The data comes from Trulia’s “Bubble Watch,” which is a quarterly assessment of how home prices currently sit in relation to their historical value. Trulia economists look at price-to-income ratio, price-to-rent ratio and long-term pricing trends to assess where prices sit on a spectrum ranging from undervalued to overvalued. The second-quarter data shows that home prices are undervalued by 3 percent nationally. To put this in perspective, at the height of the bubble, home prices were overvalued by 39 percent in 2006 and undervalued by as much as 15 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011.

October Research, LLC’s National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) held June 9-11 in New Orleans brought together experts from across industries to look at how shifting trends are helping shape the housing market and the businesses that rely on it. Most agree that the U.S. economic and housing sectors are steadily improving and that they will rebound to historically normal levels, for the most part, within a year or two. But there is a segment of the population that has the potential to either supercharge the recovery, or hold it back, depending on a few variables — and there is a good chance one of these individuals might be currently living in your basement. First-time homebuyers are making up a significantly smaller portion of the market than is historically normal — these buyers accounted for just 29 percent of all buyers in April, according to the latest data from the National Association of Realtors, which is down from a historical average of around 40 percent. If you are looking for evidence to pinpoint why the market is still tepid, this could be considered the smoking gun.

Declines in both single-family and multifamily housing starts pushed nationwide housing production down in May, according to newly released figures from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. However, single-family permits, which can be an indicator of future building activity, rose during the same month. Keep reading to see what experts said this data portends for the housing market in the near future.

McGraw Hill Construction, a provider of data, news, insights and intelligence for the construction industry, has released a new report that shows that green building projects are expected to explode in popularity over the next few years. The report, “Green Multifamily & Single Family Homes: Growth in a Recovering Market,” is compiled from surveys of builder and remodeler members of the National Association of Home Builders and reveals the evolution of green building for single-family homes. According to the latest study, green building is poised to go from niche to mainstream. Keep reading for what to expect in the market in the near future.