Home Prices, Real Estate | featured news

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.

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.

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.

The struggling U.S. housing market is expected to fall a little further as it searches for a bottom, but home prices are seen ticking up modestly in 2012, according to a Reuters poll released on Friday.

New single-family home sales unexpectedly fell in June, but a sharp rise in prices and declining supply suggested the market for new houses was starting to stabilize, a government report showed on Tuesday.

Home prices in major U.S. cities have risen for the first time in eight months, boosted by an annual flurry of spring buyers.

A backlog of foreclosures and falling sales indicate prices may decline further, discouraging builders from taking on new projects.

Home prices have reached their lowest points since the housing bubble burst in 2006, driven down by foreclosures, a glut of unsold homes and the reluctance or inability of many to buy.