Housing - recovery?

[Greebo]

Home prices: 1st annual increase in 3 years - Real estate- msnbc.com

Home prices in February posted their first annual increase since the end of 2006, lifted by temporary tax credits for homebuyers. The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday squeezed out a 0.6 percent gain. But that was half the increase analysts had expected. On a more cautionary note, 11 of the 20 cities tracked by the index showed declines from February last year.
The data underscored the fragile nature of the housing recovery. Nationally, home prices are up more than 3 percent from the bottom in May 2009, but still are 30 percent below the May 2006 peak.

Personally, I'd like to see home prices go back to the kind of inflation matching value increases we used to see before the real estate glut of the new millennium.


I'm QUITE happy with 2-3% a year for real estate, TYVM.

[DaughterOfErin]

Personally I think the tax credit is what has been artificially holding up the Industry. From what I've witnessed personally in the Industry and conversations with many of those in the Home Insurance Industry who aren't really writing many policies for new sales lately, I worry about what will happen once the tax credits go away in the next few days.

[Preston]

there are other signs of recovery in the economy (such as fuel prices). I hope things will continue to improve.

The tax credit has helped the real estate market, but I have a feeling things will continue to climb as things get better. Real estate and interest rates are still very low. And that alone is the reason I started to look into buying last year -- even before the FTHB tax credit showed up. But that was a nice bonus.

[a.nonymous]

Personally I think the tax credit is what has been artificially holding up the Industry. From what I've witnessed personally in the Industry and conversations with many of those in the Home Insurance Industry who aren't really writing many policies for new sales lately, I worry about what will happen once the tax credits go away in the next few days.

I would prefer to have some more "hard data" before making assumptions. However, the FTHB tax credit should be priced into home values already and reflect in the ratio of houses moved with FTHB vs not, as well as average prices for homes sold with FTHB benefits vs without.
I believe the percentage increase won't be close to the growth seen (therefore there must have been some real growth).

With the FTHB tax credit expiring we will see a slight drop in demand, but again, it's hard to estimate the impact without real numbers.
With the incredibly low interest rates on mortgages, I think there are still plenty of incentives to buy now. Added to that, with a more positive outlook across the board, it could well compensate for the loss of FTHB rebates in full - and maybe some more.

Take all of that in conjunction with consumer spending changes on big ticket items, and it would be easier to get an idea where the housing market will be going.

Now, if I only knew where to find all that data.