Real Estate & Mortgage

Condos Jump in CT

The Warren Group, providers of real estate and financial data throughout New England, revealed that condominium and single-family home median sale prices in Connecticut surged by more than 10 percent in 2005. While the actual number of single-family home sales tumbled, condo sales saw a minimal increase.

The median condo price experienced a healthy increase in 2005, going from $160,000 in 2004 to $185,000, representing a 15.63 percent increase. The total number of condo sales also increased in 2005 from 16,291 to 17,115, representing a 5.06 percent increase.

Affordable Homes

This from BankRate.com. Housing is still affordable in the right spots

The article says that Coastal metropolises like Los Angeles, New York, Boston and San Francisco all might be ranked among the most desirable places to live, but they are expensive! Thus home prices make it tuff to find affordable housing.

The article refeences Lawrence Yun an Econmist from NAR. He says high home prices in popular coastal cities appear to be driving a wave of migration to less costly locales, according to , economist at the National Association of Realtors, or NAR. "Californians are buying up properties in cheaper neighboring states. On the East Coast,  prospective homeowners are seeking out property in Virginia and the Carolinas."

It appears  United Van Lines reported that California had a higher number of outbound moves relative to inbound ones for the first time since 1995. For every 44 moves into the state last year, the company handled 56 outbound moves.States with a much higher number of people moving in rather than out included Oregon, Idaho, Arizona and North Carolina.

Overall, housing affordability nationwide is at its lowest point in 15 years, according to the NAR. In December, the percentage of households in California able to afford a median-priced home stood at 14 percent, according to the California Association of Realtors. New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., and increasingly, South Florida homes, , according to Yun, are also progressively unaffordable. The most affordable markets, by contrast, tend to be in the Midwest.

Fastest Growing US Counties

Florida's population of Flagler County increased 10.7 percent to 76,410 residents in the year that ended July 1, 2005. Up 53 percent increase in population since the 2000 census making it the fastest-growing U.S. county for the second year in a row, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.

Most of the top 10 fastest growing counties were on the suburban fringes of major metropolitan areas, and all but one were located in the South or West regions of the U.S.

The other fast growing counties between 2004 and 2005 include:

2. Lyon County, Nev., near Carson City
3. Kendall County, Ill., outside of Chicago
4. Rockwell County, Texas, near Dallas
5. Washington County, Utah, 120 miles north of Las Vegas
6. Nye County, Nev. 100 miles north of Las Vegas
7. Pinal County, Ariz., near Phoenix
8. Loudon County, Va., suburban Washington, D.C.
9. King George County, Va., suburban Washington, D.C.
10. Caroline County, Va., near Richmond

4th Quarter Homes Sales stay blistering

David Lereah, NAR’s chief economist, said rising interest rates dampened the sales pace in the closing quarter of last year. “Mortgage interest rates were at the highest level since the third quarter of 2003,” he said. “At the same time, we’ve seen strong double-digit appreciation in home prices, so a modest slowing from record sales was to be expected. The good news is that home sales are being sustained at historically high levels.”

The latest report on total existing-home sales shows that nationwide the seasonally adjusted annual rate* was 6.90 million units in the fourth quarter, up 0.3 percent from the 6.88 million-unit level in the fourth quarter of 2004 but 4.7 percent below the record pace of 7.24 million units in the third quarter of last year. The second highest sales rate was 7.22 million in the second quarter of 2005.

The strongest performance was in Arkansas, where the fourth-quarter resale pace jumped 29.8 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2004. Alaska existing-home sales rose 28.4 percent from a year earlier, while Louisiana posted the third highest increase, up 28.1 percent. Six other states also recorded double-digit sales gains from a year ago. Twenty-three states and the Wahington DC Real Estate posted declines, although 39 states set records for all of 2005.

Total existing-home sales, including single-family and condo, were at the third-highest pace on record in the fourth quarter of 2005. In addition, 24 states showed increases in sales activity over the same period in 2004, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

Trump and Tampa Condos

Real estate mogul Donald Trump arrived into into Tampa, Fla. for the sales launch of his namesake Trump Tower Tampa, a 52-story condominium complex in downtown Tampa in which he is partnered with local developers.

98 percent of the high-priced units have already been reserved, with the same amount of backup eservations for the 190 units. And the developers are only as far as the permit statge.

"We can't do much better than we're doing here," said Trump, who has a half-dozen residential projects under way in markets including as Chicago and Las Vegas. "I wish I could say it's 100 percent (reserved) but I'm getting modest in my old age."

Unlike a 92-story condo/hotel project in Chicago where Trump is sole owner, he placed his ownership in the Tampa project at less than 50 percent.