USA rents accelerate, rising 6.3% annually. Asking prices rose 7.8% year-over-year. At the local level, asking prices rose year-over-year in 96 of the 100 largest U.S. metros.
Demand for apartments is seemingly insatiable. Low vacancy, an improving economy and labor market, and lots of newly completed Class A properties coming online with rents higher than the market average will push asking and effective rents up by roughly 3.3% next year.
In real terms – and as a price-to-rent ratio – prices are mostly back to early 2000 levels.
A majority (85 percent) of the 382 metros covered in August experienced annual home value appreciation. Among the 30 largest metro areas covered by Zillow, 20 saw annual appreciation of 10 percent or more.
The housing market has turned—at last…. Nearly 10% more existing homes were sold in May than in the same month a year earlier, many purchased by investors who plan to rent them for now and sell them later, an important sign of an inflection point. In something of a surprise, the inventory of existing homes for sale has fallen close to the normal level of six months’ worth despite all the foreclosed homes that lenders own.
The Southland housing market posted the highest number of February home sales in five years as record levels of investor and cash buyers helped spur robust activity under $300,000. The median price paid for homes across the six-county region inched up from January but dropped below the year-earlier level for the 12th consecutive month, a real estate information service reported. The increase in sales between January and February was larger than usual. On average, sales have risen 1.1 percent between those two months since 1988, when DataQuick’s statistics begin. Southland sales have increased year-over-year for two consecutive months and for six out of the last seven months.
The housing market in the south of the United States is among the most attractive asset classes in the world, Marc Faber, the editor of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report, told CNBC on Friday, because while homebuilder stocks had rallied, property prices hadn’t moved much. “If you look at the supply of homes, new construction, and you compare it to immigration into the United States, to the growth of the population, then these markets are very attractive from a longer term perspective,” Faber told Bernie Lo on CNBC’s Straight Talk.