Home prices across the country have fallen to record lows, according to the latest report of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index – and there are few signs that the declines are slowing down.

The 10-city index fell 0.6 percent in June while the 20-city index fell 0.5 percent. The year-over-year declines in home prices were 17.0 percent for the 10-city index and 15.9 percent for the 20.

All 20 cities measured by Case-Shiller showed negative returns over the past year, though the pace of monthly declines in June slowed across the country as a whole when compared with May.

The hardest hit areas continued to be Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix which saw home prices fall over the past year 28.6 percent, 28.3 percent, and 27.9 percent respectively.

In contrast, Atlanta showed modest price appreciation for the second month in a row with home values increasing 0.6 percent. Still, Atlanta has now shed 8.1 percent in year-over-year value.

We’d love to be your Real Estate Lawyers in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

Down is the new up, originally uploaded by JonathanPuntervold.

Nationwide sales of existing homes rose 3.1 percent off a ten year low last month, according to the latest National Association of Realtor report.

It’s the highest level of existing home sales in five months.

Still, resales were well below July 2007 – which are down 13.2 percent nationwide.

The rise in sales was more than forecast and comes on the heels of an encouraging Pending Home Sales repost issued earlier this month.

Driving the rise in the numbers of existing home sales is a significant drop in home prices. According to the NAR, the median price of an existing home has slipped 7.1 percent from last year to $212,400.00.

The overall outlook for housing still remains grim: while the recent increases in the number of pending and existing home sales are encouraging, increasing numbers of foreclosures, a tougher economic environment, tighter lending standards, and a glut of inventory continue to weigh on the market.

In fact, total housing inventory rose 3.9 percent last month to a record 11.2-month supply of homes for sale. The NAR states that that a 5 to 6 month supply of homes is an indicator of a stable housing market.

In the South, existing home sales actually fell 0.5 percent last month for a year-over-year decline of 18.1 percent. The median home price also slipped 3.5 percent to $179,300.00.

We’d love to be your Real Estate Lawyers in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

I’m Moving Up, originally uploaded by gr3m.

The federal government reported yesterday that home building fell sharply last month, yet another sign that the real estate market is nowhere near a bottom.

According to the Census bureau report, total housing starts dropped 11 percent from June’s revised numbers and were 29.6 percent below July 2007. Single-family starts dropped 2.9 percent for a year-over-year slide of 39.2 percent.

Building permits, which were buoyed last month by a revision in New York City’s building codes, dropped 17.7 percent, a fall of 32.4 percent from last year. Single-family permits shed 5.2 percent to a level a staggering 41.4 percent under July 2007.

Single-family housing starts fell to a 17-year low - at least the seventh-straight month of record lows. Permits fell to a level not seen in 26 years.

In the south, housing starts dropped 7.8 percent from June and 38.9 percent from last year. The number of housing permits also plunged, losing 4.7 percent from last month and 40.4 percent from July 2008.

We’d love to be your closing attorneys in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

17 - 20 to 1, originally uploaded by SpacePotato.

The number of foreclosures across the country continued to soar last month, according to the latest report from RealtyTrac.

Total foreclosure filings in July, including delinquency notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions, were up 8 percent from last month – and 55% from last year.

That equals a rate of one out of every 464 houses being in some stage of foreclosure last month, with more than 680,000 properties repossessed by mortgage lenders since August 2007.

Nevada led the nation with one out of every 106 homes in foreclosure and a 15 percent monthly increase in foreclosure activity.

After falling to eighth in the nation last month, Georgia jumped back up to the sixth-highest state with the most foreclosures. One out of every 385 homes received a foreclosure notice in July – an increase of 15.46 percent from June and 18.91 percent above July 2007.

We’d love to be your Atlanta closing attorneys. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

number 6 six, originally uploaded by meek rgt.

The number of signed contracts to buy a home unexpectedly rose last month to the highest level seen in eight months.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index released today, the number of contracts signed in June was up 5.3 percent from a downwardly-revised figure in May.

The jump in the Index came as a surprise. Economists had widely expected that home sales contract signings would decline by 1 percent.

Still, the number of pending home sales was 12.7 percent below last year’s levels.

In the south, pending sales jumped 9.3 percent from last month, but nevertheless were 16.6 percent below June 2007.

While an individual monthly increase does not signal that the end of the troubles in real estate has been reached, it is yet another encouraging sign that a bottom may be forming. Month-to-month price decreases as measured by Case/Shiller seem to be lessening, new home sales aren’t showing the precipitous monthly drops as they have in the past, and there is brand-new legislation from the federal government intended to shore up the ailing industry.

Still, it is unlikely that any bottom in the market will be followed by an immediate turnaround. The real question is: where does real estate go from here? Is the market going to follow the bottom before there is a gradual turnaround? Or are we poised on the brink of more severe and significant drops?

We’d love to be your Atlanta closing attorneys. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

Life’s up and downs, originally uploaded by CATeyes.

Perception and reality. It’s an interesting thing how people will believe what they want, despite any and all facts to the contrary.

Real estate web site Zillow.com released a survey today showing the difference between what we want to believe and what’s really going on in the real estate market. And according to the survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, 62 percent of Americans believe that their homes have maintained or increased in value in the past year when in fact 77 percent of homes have actually seen their home values fall.

It’s called the “Not My House!” sentiment, and Zillow created a Home Value Misperception Index to measure it – by taking the difference between the percentage of homeowners who believe their home increased in value and the percentage that actually did.

Nationwide, that Home Value Misperception Index sits at 32.

In the south, a whopping 48 percent of homeowners thought that their homes gained value in the past year. 23 percent thought their home’s value stayed the same.

The truth: only 26 percent of homes increased in value in the south, which led the nation with a Home Value Misperception Index of 36.

It’s an interesting statistic, though not actually useful for much. Still, it illustrates an important point to real estate investors and ordinary home sellers alike: that in buying or selling a home, you have to be realistic about that property’s value – and the chances are more likely than not that you aren’t.

The Misperception Index - Click to Enlarge

We’d love to be your Atlanta closing attorneys. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

NO, originally uploaded by ukmcbo.

Home prices continue to fall throughout the country, according to the May report of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

In the 22nd straight month of declining home values, the 20-city index slipped 0.9 percent to a new record year-over-year low of 15.8 percent.

The 10-city index dropped 1.0 percent in May to a level 16.9 percent below last year. It also hit a new record low.

There has not been a month of price appreciation since August 2006.

Each of the 20 metro areas surveyed by the index posted annual declines. Nine hit record lows, and ten recorded double-digit drops in home prices.

Las Vegas and Miami continued to show the largest price drops in the nation, with prices falling 28.4 percent and 28.3 percent respectively. Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco also posted year-over-year declines in excess of twenty percent.

Atlanta was one of seven cities measured by Case-Shiller that showed some improvement from April, posting month-to-month appreciation of 0.6 percent. It is the first time Atlanta has seen a monthly price increase since last year.

Still, home prices in Atlanta slipped to 7.9 percent below last year’s values.

While the picture painted by the Case-Shiller index remains bleak, there are some positive signs that at least a bottom may be forming for housing prices. For the second month in a row, a number of cities showed very modest price appreciation. Additionally, the overall price declines appear to be slowing.

Certainly, this does not indicate rebound and recovery for the battered housing market, and it is most likely that prices will remain at low levels for some time before there is any significant appreciation. But we may have hit the point where things may not get much worse – which for today’s real estate investors is certainly an improvement.

We’d love to be your closing attorneys in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

In God, originally uploaded by ThePDW.

Georgia dropped to the state with the eighth-highest foreclosure rates in the second quarter of 2008, according to the Realtytrac second-quarter foreclosure report which was published on Friday. Last quarter, the state ranked sixth in the nation.

Additionally, metro Atlanta measured twentieth overall among cities with the most foreclosures.

Realtytrac, which measures foreclosure filings – default notices, auction sale notices, and bank repossessions - reported that 27,253 homes in Georgia fell into foreclosure during the second quarter. That’s a drop of 2.63 percent from the first quarter, but still 85.12 percent above last year – representing a foreclosure rate of one out of every 140 Georgia homes.

The great majority of those foreclosures were in the Atlanta metro area, where RealtyTrac reported 22,484 foreclosures – or one out of every 91 homes. That’s a drop of 0.31 percent from the first quarter, but still a year-over-year increase of 77.05 percent.

Nationwide, second-quarter foreclosures increased almost 14 percent from the first quarter of 2008 – and jumped 121 percent from the second quarter of 2007.

While the foreclosure picture looks bleak in Atlanta, things could be much worse. Stockton, California led the nation in foreclosures, with one out of every 25 households receiving a foreclosure notice during the quarter.

We’d love to be your closing attorneys in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

toon number 20, originally uploaded by givepeasachance.

The pace of new home sales fell again in June, but the annual rate was much better than economists predicted.

The U.S. Census bureau reported that June sales of new single-family homes fell 0.6 percent from May to a seasonally-adjusted rate of 530,000. Economists had predicted that June sales would come in at 505,000.

Still, new home sales were an anemic 33.2 percent below last year’s levels.

In the South, sales declined 2.0 percent from May and were down 34.9 percent from June 2007.

The inventory of new homes on the market also declined 3.8 percent from May with ten-months’ worth of inventory currently for sale. The supply of new homes, though, is still 20.5 percent above last year.

It certainly appears as if the builders may have hit bottom: they’ve drastically reduced prices to the point where they cannot really be cut any more, they’ve reduced new home starts, and they’re working on reducing excess inventory. Unfortunately, while this may be a bottom, there is very little indication that things will get any better any time soon, and it is much more likely that they will continue to languish at these levels until there is a broader recovery in the housing market.

With the number of foreclosures swelling and the number of existing homes for sale increasing, that broader recovery is still probably some time off.

We’d love to be your closing attorneys in Atlanta. Want to know more? Contact us and we’ll be happy to discuss how Harlan and Associates can be of service to you!

Can’t tread water, originally uploaded by lowefidelity.