Housing Market, Home Prices | featured news

Home prices edged higher for the second month in a row in March, suggesting prices are stabilizing as the housing recovery gains momentum.

Home prices rose in March for the first time since last July, helped by tighter housing inventory, data analysis firm CoreLogic said on Tuesday.

New data show price declines easing in big cities, sales of new homes improving nationally and foreclosures in California dropping to levels not seen since 2007. The housing market's long, cold winter may finally be heading into a springtime thaw.

Single-family home prices rose for the first time in 10 months, in an encouraging sign the battered sector is starting to stabilize, a closely watched survey said on Tuesday.

The relentless decline in home prices is nearing an end and prices should rise for the first time in seven years in 2013, but a possible new wave of foreclosures could threaten the recovery, according a Reuters poll of economists.

Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy....

A monthly survey showed consumers’ confidence in the economy surged in December and was near a post-recession peak, although home prices fell in October in most major U.S. cities.

The economy seems to have picked up in the second half of the year. But apparently no one told the housing market. Home prices continued to fall in October, even as sales of existing homes picked up and homebuilders applied for more permits. After stabilizing this summer, prices fell at a 7.5 percent annual rate in the three months ending in October, according to the latest data from CoreLogic, a real estate research firm.

Americans bought slightly more new homes in October, a hopeful sign for the troubled housing market. But the median sales price fell to its lowest level of the year, and the overall sales pace is trailing last year's - the worst in half a century.

The closely watched Case-Shiller index of home prices in American cities rose slightly in August from the prior month. Prices of previously owned single-family homes rose 0.2% in August over July and, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index of 20 metropolitan areas. The index dropped 3.8% from the same month a year prior.