News and Information from Strategic Real Estate Opportunities

New orders for manufactured durable goods in July 2009 increased 1.3%, to $355.5 billion.  Shipments and unfilled orders were virtually unchanged.  Inventories declined 0.7% from June 2009, to $503.1 billion.

Single-family home prices in June rose for the second consecutive and posted their first quarterly increase in three years, up 2.9 percent, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Schiller Index.

The S&P/Case-Shiller composite indexes of 10 and 20 metropolitan areas both rose 1.4 percent in June from May, almost three times the 0.5 percent increases of the month before. May’s increases were the first in nearly three years. Those indexes have dropped 54.3 percent and 45.3 percent from their 2006 peaks, respectively.

S&P also said its U.S. National Home Price Index recorded a 14.9 percent decline for the second quarter, compared with a 19.1 percent year-over-year drop in the first quarter.

The National Association of Realtors reported today that existing-home sales – including single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – rose 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million units in July from a level of 4.89 million in June, and are 5.0 percent above the 4.99 million-unit pace in July 2008.  The last time sales rose for four consecutive months was in June 2004, and the last time sales were higher than a year earlier was November 2005.

The monthly sales gain was the largest on record for the total existing-home sales series dating back to 1999. (more…)

In July, employers took 2,157 mass layoffs involving 206,791 workers. The number of mass layoff events decreased by 606 and the number of associated initial claims decreased by 72,440 from the prior month. Over the year, mass layoff events increased by 622, and associated initial claims increased by 54,292.

The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 9.24 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the second quarter of 2009, up 12 basis points from the first quarter of 2009, and up 283 basis points from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) National Delinquency Survey. The non-seasonally adjusted delinquency rate increased 64 basis points from 8.22 percent in the first quarter of 2009 to 8.86 percent this quarter.

The delinquency rate breaks the record set last quarter.  The records are based on MBA data dating back to 1972.

The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past due but does not include loans somewhere in the process of foreclosure.  The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter was 4.30 percent, an increase of 45 basis points from the first quarter of 2009 and 155 basis points from one year ago. The combined percentage of loans in foreclosure and at least one payment past due was 13.16 percent on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the highest ever recorded in the MBA delinquency survey.

The percentage of loans on which foreclosure actions were started during the second quarter was 1.36 percent, down one basis point from last quarter and up 28 basis points from one year ago. (more…)