There has been a lot of good news in the real estate market lately. For the first time in years, in many areas, home prices have risen, and inventory levels are down. Well according to this report by Zillow, the number of “underwater” homeowners actually rose last quarter compared with the same time a year ago:

Zillow — which looks at outstanding loan amounts on individual properties, and compares them with estimated valuations for each home that are generated by computer models — estimates that 15.7 million homes were underwater during the first three months of the year. That’s 31.4 percent of all homes with mortgages, up from 31.1 percent during the last three months of 2011 not all homeowners have mortgages.

via Percentage of underwater homeowners still growing | Inman News.

Now, either these stats aren’t very accurate, and Zillow is notorious for having inaccurate information, or overall home prices were actually down from the first quarter of last year. With the other trends we have seen in the overall housing market, I’m betting that this will be the last time we hear of a report like this.

The fact still remains that there are way too many underwater homeowners in the United States. In Las Vegas, more than 71% of homeowners with mortgages owe more on their mortgage, than their house is worth! That’s crazy…..

According to this report, the Miami area is in terrible shape in terms of future foreclosures. While just 46.4 percent of the homeowners were underwater, 26.8% of those underwater were seriously delinquent. I guess the positive news for Miami is that the percentage of underwater borrowers was slightly down, .6% compared with a year ago.

Nearly every major market tracked by Zillow had a high percentage of underwater borrowers. Pittsburgh PA was best among the major metro areas with 16.7% of borrowers underwater.

It’s pretty crazy just how financially insoluble so many Americans are. Owning a home right now is not only not a good source of wealth, it’s just the opposite for millions of Americans. It’s a source of debt. A source of bondage. Hopefully as a nation we can learn from this crisis and can practice better financial judgement so that a crisis like this doesn’t happen again.

Report: Utah home prices up

There’s more evidence Utah’s real estate market is turning around. Utah home prices were up 2.3 percent in March compared to March 2011, according to research company CoreLogic. Compared to other states, Utah had the 14th highest appreciation.

The picture looked even better when distressed properties were excluded. When short sales and foreclosures were taken out, Utah home prices rose 3.4 percent, according to CoreLogic. Compared to other states, Utah and Kansas were tied for the fifth-highest appreciation excluding distressed sales.

The CoreLogic Home Price Index tracks increases and decreases in the sales prices of the same homes over time. This is helpful because it is not influenced by the mix of homes selling, which can change from year to year.

“The spring housing market is responding to an improving balance between real estate supply and demand which is causing stabilization in house prices,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.

Nationally, home prices fell 0.6 percent from March 2011 to March 2012. Excluding distressed sales, they rose 0.9 percent.

“While housing prices remain flat nationally, in many markets tighter inventories are beginning to lift home prices,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic.

With as many positive indicators as we’ve had regarding the health of the Utah real estate market, I think it’s pretty safe to say now that we are in recovery mode. The market has bottomed out, and now things are stabilizing and appreciating again. More reasons why Utah is such a great state.

April home sales for Cache County Utah are not quite as good as they were during March. Compared with April of a year ago, home sales improved 7%. 71 homes sold during April compared with 66 in April of 2011.
The number of homes for sale has also risen, but this is typical for spring. Their are currently 681 residential homes for sale in Cache County. This is up from 635 a month ago, but down by 13.3% from the 786 listings a year ago. Some positive news for the Cache Valley Real Estate market is that the number of under contract homes is at its highest level since May of 2010. That was right before the expiration of the home buying tax credit. Cache County currently has 165 pending home sales. This means that we should have strong home sales in the next few months.

Despite the fact that real estate sales were down in Logan, the market is still showing some very positive signs. Inventory is down nearly fourteen percent from a year ago, and Under Contract homes are at a two year high. This should be the best summer to for Logan Real Estate we have seen in years.

A Few Observations on the Google Penguin Update — April 28, 2012

The new Google Penguin Update has done some really interesting things for real estate searches. It’s wacky. Some of the changes seem to be without rhyme or reason. They seem to contradict the supposed premiss for the algorithm update. Here are a few of the things I have observed while doing real estate searches in the Penguin environment.

Aged Sites Matter – As long as there is no indication of artificial link building.

I have seen many “old” websites that haven’t been worked on or modified in years, that are now relevant in the search results again. Most of these sites haven’t seen top 20 rankings since 2006, if ever.

For real estate agents who rely on leads generated by organic search engine traffic, there have been some major changes, and reduced lead quantities over the last week thanks to Google’s new “Penguin” update.