Home Prices, Home Sales | featured news

Home resales hit a three-year high in February and prices jumped, adding to signs of an acceleration in the housing market recovery, even though the supply of properties on the market increased.

New single-family home sales in June fell by the most in more than a year and prices resumed their downward trend, suggesting a setback for the budding housing market recovery.

Home resales fell in June but the median sales price was higher than a year earlier as fewer people sold their homes under distressed conditions, giving mixed signals for the country's nascent housing market recovery.

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.

California's median home price rose 11% in February from a year earlier, while home sales in the state dipped for the second consecutive month.