Archive for October, 2010
The average price of a single-family home in August in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index rose 1.7% from a year ago.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected the index to show a gain of 2.1% from a year earlier.
Data from the ratings agency's benchmark home price index showed prices fell in 12 of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in August from the year ago. The 20-city composite index for August fell 0.2% from July and the 10-city composite slid 0.1%.
Standard & Poor's said the 10-city composite index rose 2.6% for the month from the year-earlier August. Analysts said both indicies are down about 28% from the summer of 2006 and now at levels last seen in late 2003 and early 2004.
Home prices in California's three largest cities slowed with gains of 5.4% in Los Angeles, 6.9% in San Diego, and 7.8% in San Francisco, each of which is down significantly from July, according to Standard & Poor's.
Nationwide prices continue to level off as demand cools following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit, which pulled tons of sales forward into the first half of this year.
"A disappointing report," said David Blitzer, chairman of the Standard & Poor’s index committee. "Home prices broadly declined in August. Seventeen of the 20 cities and both composites saw a weakening in year-over-year figures, as compared to July, indicating that the housing market continues to bounce along the recent lows. Over the last four months both the 10- and 20-city composites show slowing growth, after sustaining consistent gains since their April 2009 troughs."
Write to Jason Philyaw.
Bank of America Corp. for the first time acknowledged finding some mistakes in foreclosure files as it begins to resubmit documents in 102,000 cases.
The Charlotte, N.C., lender discovered errors in 10 to 25 out of the first several hundred foreclosure cases it examined starting last Monday. The problems included improper paperwork, lack of signatures and missing files, said people familiar with the results. In certain cases, information about the property and payment history didn't match.
Toll Brothers, the largest U.S. luxury-home builder, said it obtained an $885 million revolving line of credit in a “strong vote of confidence” by its banks as the economy emerges from the worst recession since the 1930s.
The new four-year facility replaces a $1.89 billion revolver that was set to expire in March 2011, the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company said today in a statement. The new credit line can be increased to as much as $2 billion, Toll Brothers said.
The story was strange enough to be a child's fable: In an isolated section of the Chesapeake Bay, there was a two-story Victorian house that seemed to emerge directly from the water.
And, scurrying around it, there was a retiree, trying to keep the house from falling in.
Finally, the man gave up. And last week, the house did, too. Raked by a storm, it cracked at the spine and collapsed into a one-story wreck.
The tale of the house and the man illustrates the Chesapeake's problem with rising oceans and sinking land. It has already erased life on most of the bay's islands and now is threatening to erase the islands themselves.
