IT'S every home owner's heartbreak -- watching the value of their home plummet to half the price they paid within a few years. And in working-class suburbs around the country, it's becoming an all-too-regular occurrence, The Australian reported. Zaia Dawood, a real estate agent at Fairfield in Sydney's southwest, last week sold a two-bedroom unit -- bought for $240,000 in 2006 -- for just $140,000. "It is a massive decrease, but it's not rare in these areas,'' Mr Dawood said at the weekend.

via news.com.au

THE resources boom has pushed up residential property prices in some mining towns by more than 44 per cent in the past year. RP Data research shows prices at Broken Hill in western New South Wales rose 44.6 per cent and, at Glen Eden, a suburb in the Queensland city of Gladstone, they rose 44.2 per cent, The Australian reported. Other resource-rich centres where prices jumped in the year included Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (with 36.1 per cent), Clermont in Queensland (with 39 per cent) and Whyalla in South Australia (with 35.4 per cent).

via news.com.au

Research from the financial comparison site also showed that of those lenders that have passed on the cut, 20 (28%) have lowered their SVR by less than 0.25% - the cut made by the Monetary Policy Committee in April. According to Moneyfacts’ research, the majority of lenders who haven’t passed on the cut, or have passed on less than 0.25% are building societies, with 18 (38%) of the 51 societies that offer mortgages still not declaring their intentions regarding any rate cuts and another 18 (38%) announcing cuts of less than 0.25%.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Homeowners are far better placed to weather a house price crash than they were in the early 1990s, analysis for the BBC has suggested. House prices would have to fall by 56% to put the average mortgage borrower in negative equity.
Government figures suggest the average borrower has an outstanding mortgage worth 44% of their property's value.
The analysis was done for the BBC programme the Truth About Property, by housing intelligence monitor Hometrack. According to Hometrack, the average homeowner has equity worth £167,000.

via news.bbc.co.uk

The Truth about Property is back for a second series and aims to make sense of the housing market turmoil. In this series presenters Andrew Verity and Jenny Scott travel around the UK to hear how households are coping.
Are you crash proof? The ubiquitous credit crunch has led to a rough ride for home owners in recent months, causing higher mortgage costs and in some cases, negative equity and repossession. In the first programme Andrew and Jenny find out how homeowners would cope in the event of a major property crash.

via news.bbc.co.uk

That is the surprise finding of the first poll to test the assumption that house price falls are unpopular and therefore politically damaging. Barely a fifth of people want house prices to rise - fewer than the number of people who want them to fall. The poll of 1,005 people, commissioned by the BBC, found that only 22% said they wanted prices to go up while 28% said they wanted house prices to fall. The poll, carried out by ICM, canvassed people over a three-day period from 25 to 27 April.

via abclocal.go.com

Exclusive bricks and mortar are still successfully shifting in the Capital, despite the market slowdown, according to estate agency Hamptons International. The key, it would appear, is to drop the asking price by about 10-15 per cent. Do that and the buyers will flock to your door. Phil Tennant, Regional Director of Hamptons International, comments: "We have seen that where clients have taken our advice on realistic pricing, there is a sharp increase in offers for those properties.

via findaproperty.com

The HBF estimated that although around 300,000 people are employed in building homes, many more are employed either directly or indirectly in servicing the housing industry, and would be affected if there are sustained job losses in the sector. Such people include solicitors, estate agents, removal men and mortgage brokers.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Research from the financial comparison site also showed that of those lenders that have passed on the cut, 20 (28%) have lowered their SVR by less than 0.25% - the cut made by the Monetary Policy Committee in April. According to Moneyfacts’ research, the majority of lenders who haven’t passed on the cut, or have passed on less than 0.25% are building societies, with 18 (38%) of the 51 societies that offer mortgages still not declaring their intentions regarding any rate cuts and another 18 (38%) announcing cuts of less than 0.25%.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

U.S. foreclosure filings reached a record high in April, rising almost 65% over the previous year and putting municipalities at risk by cutting into the value of taxed property, according to a study released Wednesday. Some 243,353 households, nearly one in 519, received a foreclosure filing during April, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report from RealtyTrac, an online marketplace that tracks foreclosed properties. That was up 4% from March, and surpassed the record of 239,851 set in August 2007.

via money.cnn.com

The momentum behind congressional efforts to let the government offer more aid to struggling homeowners has hit stiff resistance. The Senate Banking Committee is scheduled to debate and possibly vote Thursday on a housing bill sponsored by Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. The Senate proposal has been propelled by mounting concern about foreclosures. But its prospects have turned murky as some Republican senators have come out against the bill.

via money.cnn.com

According to The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) April witnessed the ninth consecutive month of deteriorating sentiment amongst chartered surveyors.
According to RICS, -95.1 per cent of chartered surveyors reported price falls rather than rises over April, compared to a balance of -79.4 per cent in March.
Surveyors in every region reported prices falls, including the previously resilient Scotland (a balance of -8). In East Anglia, the North and the North West England there was a 100 per cent clean sweep of surveyors reporting falls.

via findaproperty.com

The RICS house price balance dropped for the ninth month in succession in April. Over 95% more chartered surveyors reported a fall than a rise in house prices, an increase from 79.4% in March. The regional picture is even more depressed with surveyors in East Anglia, the North and North West unanimous that house prices are falling. The net balance in Scotland turned negative - previously it was the only UK region where the majority of surveyors were reporting house price increases.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Single-family home prices dropped 7.7% in the first quarter in the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began reporting prices in 1982. The median sales price fell to $196,300, down 4.8% compared with the last three months of 2007. Lawrence Yun, the chief economist of NAR, attributed much of the record decline to liquidity problems dragging down high-priced markets. "These are highly unusual results because there were very few jumbo loan originations in the latest quarter," he said.

via money.cnn.com

The National Association of Realtors said that median prices for existing single-family homes dropped in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas in the January-March period, while 48 metropolitan areas saw prices increase and one reported no change. Nationally, the median home price -- the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less -- fell to $196,300 in the first quarter, down by 7.7 percent from the same period a year ago, when the median sales price was $212,600.

via abclocal.go.com