The Good News In Real Estate courtesy of Prudential Northwest Realty Associates, 2012 ‐ 4th Quarter Quotes, Issue 71

Excerpted from The Seattle Post Intelligencer ‐ December 5, 2012

Seattle‐Area House Prices Surge…King County house prices rose by nearly 20% over the past year, according to a new report. The median price of a King County house that sold in November was $385,000 up 19.7% from a year earlier and 4.1% from this October, the Northwest Multiple Listing Service reported. The median price in Seattle was $425,000, up 18.1% from last November and 1.2% from October. “Incredible,” said Glen Crellin, associate director of the Runstad Center for Real Estate Research at the University of Washington. “I’m surprised by how much they’ve jumped.” Price increases close to 20% sound like the sort of jumps we saw during the bubble years. So is this reason to worry that the market may be bubbling up again? “It would be if it weren’t for the fact that we’reat a point in the housing calendar that is going to lead to slower levels of activity anyway,” Crellin said.

“Once the prime season starts again next spring, an influx of homes for sale should ease the pressure. We may see prices continue to jump significantly between now and next spring.”

Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal ‐ December 14, 2012

Home Prices Could Jump 9.7% in 2013…Home‐price forecasts for 2013 are on the rise. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. expects U.S. home prices to rise 3.4% in its base‐case estimate and up to 9.7% in its most bullish scenario of economic growth. Standard & Poor’s said it expects a 5% rise in 2013. The J.P. Morgan analysts boosted their base‐case estimate from 1.5% after a convincing rise in the “net demand” for housing this year has surpassed 2 million homes for the first time since 2006, said John Sim, a strategist at the investment bank. Net demand is the pace of existing home sales minus the inventory of homes available for sale.

Excerpted from Puget Sound Business Journal ‐ December 19, 2012

Seattle‐Area Home Values Keep on Rising…Home values in the Seattle metro area in November posted their largest monthly gain since 2007, according to a report from Seattle‐based online real estate listing service, Zillow. November marked the ninth consecutive month that home values have appreciated in the Puget Sound area. Nationwide, home values have risen every month for more than a year. Within the Puget Sound area, several cities posted double‐digit gains in November.

Excerpted from The Washington Post ‐ December 19, 2012

Wall Street Is Betting on a Housing Recovery…The highest return among stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index for the year so far is Pulte Homes, the major homebuilder; as of Wednesday morning it had returned investors 195%. “The quality of the traffic is superb and visitors are very serious about buying,” said Douglas Yearly, the chief executive of major homebuilder Toll Brothers, in a conference call with analysts earlier this month. The question now is not whether housing is coming back; new data shows that November housing starts were up 21.6% from a year earlier. The question is what will the housing recovery look like. Will it be strong enough to pull the rest of the economy with it, even amid potentially tighter fiscal policy and international economic turmoil.

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