Tag Archives: RealtyTrac

In a report released Thursday, real estate data firm RealtyTrac revealed that 33.9 percent of single-family home and condo sales last quarter were transacted in cash, down from 36.9 percent in the second quarter and flat from last year.

The highest percentage of residential mortgage loans that were seriously underwater in the third quarter were originated during the housing bubble between 2004 and 2008, according to RealtyTrac's U.S. Home Equity & Underwater Report for Q3 2014. The number of Q3's seriously underwater mortgages that were originated in the years following 2006 has declined steadily, though it has ticked back up in the last two years.

RealtyTrac reported that 8.1 million U.S. homeowners, representing 15 percent of all mortgages in the country, were seriously underwater on their mortgage in Q3, the lowest percentage of underwater mortgages nationwide since RealtyTrac began tracking the data in Q1 2012.

RealtyTrac's election housing scorecard rated 1,547 county housing markets in the U.S. based on five factors that affect the health of housing. A total of 811 U.S. county housing markets (52 percent) were rated as "better off" than they were two years ago, compared to only 11 percent (176 markets) categorized as "worse off."

Home equity lending made solid strides in the last year but still has a lot of ground to cover to return to pre-crisis levels, housing data firm RealtyTrac said in a new report Thursday. In its first-ever U.S. Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) Trends Report, the company revealed that lenders originated an estimated 797,865 HELOCs in the 12 months ending in June, up 20.6 percent from the prior period and the highest level since the year ending June 2009.

Despite seeing a decline in average gross return on investment (ROI) and average gross profit on flipped homes, California still ranked fourth among the 50 states and the District of Columbia in flipped homes as a percentage of total sales in Q2, according to RealtyTrac.

Home sales in August retreated annually for the fourth straight month as home prices ticked up to a six-year high, RealtyTrac revealed Thursday in its latest sales report. According to the company's data, U.S. residential properties, including single-family homes, condos, and townhomes, sold at an estimated annual rate of 4.5 million last month, down half a percent from July and 16 percent from August 2013.

RealtyTrac's latest report on housing affordability shows that 96 percent of U.S. housing markets are still affordable for recent graduates making the median household income, even those with student loans. RealtyTrac found that the minimum amount of income needed to purchase a median-priced home, with and without student loans, was feasible in 475 out of 494 counties with a population of at least 100,000.

Nationwide sales of flipped homes dropped both quarter-over-quarter and year-over year in the second quarter of 2014 as profit margins shrank, according to RealtyTrac. About 31,000 homes were flipped—bought and sold again within 12 months—in Q2, the company reported, accounting for 4.6 percent of all single-family home sales in the United States.

The second quarter of 2014 saw fewer all-cash home sales than the first quarter as institutional investors backed off from the market. In a quarterly report released Tuesday, RealtyTrac reported all-cash transactions made up 37.9 percent of all single-family home and condo sales in April, May, and June, down from the first quarter's three-year high of 42.0 percent but up from 35.7 percent in the year-ago quarter.