Tampa Bay Real Estate

U.S. home prices rose in January at the fastest annual pace since June 2006, just before the housing bubble burst. The gain shows the housing recovery is strengthening ahead of the all-important spring buying season.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index climbed 8.1 percent in the 12 months ending in January. That’s up from a 6.8 annual gain in December. Prices rose in all 20 cities. Eight markets posted double-digit increases, led by a 23.2 percent gain in Phoenix. Prices rose 17.5 percent in San Francisco and 15.3 percent in Las Vegas, one of the nation’s hardest hit markets during the crisis.

Prices rose in 11 of 20 cities on a month-over-month basis. The monthly numbers are not seasonally adjusted and reflect the slower winter buying period.

The S&P/Case-Shiller index covers roughly half of U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The January figures are the latest available.

Home prices nationwide are still 29 percent below their peak reached at the height of the housing bubble in August 2006. They are only back to where they were in August 2003.

Still, steady price increases should help make the housing recovery sustainable and add to economic growth. Higher home prices encourage more people to buy before prices rise further.

“Over time, persistently rising house prices also boost household wealth, make lenders more willing to lend because the asset they’re underwriting is appreciating, and ease pressure on local government budgets that get revenue from property taxes,” Jonathan Basile, director of economics at Credit Suisse, wrote in a research note.

Other recent reports have shown a strengthening recovery in housing, helped by near-record-low mortgage rates. Construction of single-family homes rose in February at the fastest pace in 4 ½ years. Sales of previously owned homes rose last month to their fastest pace in more than three years.

More Americans are putting their houses on the market, suggesting they believe the housing market will continue to strengthen.

The number of available homes for sale rose 10 percent last month, the first monthly gain since April. Even with the gain, the inventory of homes for sale was still 19 percent below a year ago.

Investment in housing, including home construction, contributed to the nation’s economic growth last year for the first time since 2005; from 2006 through 2011, a drop in housing investment dragged economic growth down.

A recent article from CNBC is indicating that banks may be moving back to lower down payment loans- something not seen since the collapse of the housing market which resulted in a 50% loss in values in some areas of Tampa Bay.

Lenders are now beginning to approve low down payment loans, mostly due to the fact that the government sponsored mortgage giant,  Fannie Mae,  is buying them.

Most banks have been requiring at least 20% of the purchase price as a down payment over the past 4 years, unless the buyer used an FHA loan which is backed by the government and requires only 3.5% of the contract price as a down payment.

With Fannie Mae buying loans with as little as a 3 percent down payment, banks feel more comfortable lending to qualified buyers with little money down. These loans also require private mortgage insurance which has been difficult t obtain as these companies absorbed billions of dollars in claims on defaulted loans. Rising home values also provide a cushion to the lenders and insurers who are not as concerned with the property values falling below what they have loaned on them.

Property values in the Tampa Bay real estate market have increased by as much as 10% in many neighborhoods and are showing no signs of slowing, given the limited inventory of homes available for purchase.

The only low down payment loan left after the crash was through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)—the government's loan insurer. The FHA took on a huge share of the market, far more than it was ever meant to, and while that helped prop up the mortgage market in the short term, it was not sustainable, and the FHA took on huge losses.

Now, facing a $16 billion shortfall, the FHA has raised premiums and will raise them yet again next month. FHA loans are becoming increasingly expensive and the new low down payment programs being offered outside of FHA should help the markets continued growth and provide solid home buyers a chance to purchase without a substantial amount of money down.

By RICHARD MULLINS| The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA --

The tower boom is definitely back in Tampa.

After years with almost no new residential construction, developers on Monday filed plans with the city of Tampa for yet another new downtown tower, this one called SkyHouse Channelside.

Added together, various projects in Tampa could bring more than 2,100 units to the market in the next couple of years, almost all of them rental apartments geared to the Generation Y demographic, which developers say wants to remain as mobile as possible.

The new tower would stand near the corner of 11th and Whiting streets and reach 23 stories tall, rivaling the Towers at Channelside on the south end of the neighborhood, and include 320 apartment units, with a ground-floor level of retail and a separate parking deck with 450 spaces.

If that sounds similar to other towers in town, here's one reason: The SkyHouse is backed by Atlanta-based Novare Group, which built the Skypoint and Element towers in downtown Tampa.

Formally, Novare Group has filed only a rezoning request with the city, which is early in the process, but it already has momentum with similar, prototype "SkyHouse" towers under way or completed in Orlando, Houston, Austin, Texas, and two in Atlanta.

"Along the west coast of Florida, Tampa is the home to job creation for Gen Y, our primary target resident," said Novare Group President Jim Borders in a statement to the Tribune. "This fits well with our strategy of serving the premier business centers of the Southeast with great high-rise rental residential communities."

An estimated 4 million people will turn 22 every year for the next four years, said Mark Stewart, director of investments for Batson-Cook Development, a partner on the project. "Given the unique and attractive employment characteristics of Tampa, we see this market maintaining strong future growth and believe SkyHouse will be extremely well received."

Residential apartments are the hottest project type in development lately, and various developers plan scores of new projects around this region: 246 units at 6608 S. Westshore Blvd.; 311 units in the "NoHo Flats" project near the University of Tampa at West Fig Street and North Rome Avenue; 231 units at the former Whiskey River site at 2206 W. Swann Ave.; 300 units at 4504 W. Spruce St. near International Plaza mall; several hundred units at the city-backed Encore development north of downtown at 1101 Ray Charles Blvd.; 367 units at the Crescent project on Bayshore Boulevard just south of the Platt Street Bridge.

Tampa developer Greg Minder, who originally was involved in the Skypoint and Element projects, also plans a residential tower adjacent to the Straz Center with 350 units – a project that has strong support from Mayor Bob Buckhorn.

Ken Stoltenberg, who built the Grand Central buildings in the Channel District also plans a tower with 316 units called The Martin, on the east side of Meridian Avenue, just south of East Twiggs Street, with a wide span of two-story retail space and a tower further to the east.

Often, the apartments in these structures are built in a way that makes it easier to convert them to condominiums later.

However, the financial markets have suddenly opened up for developers planning rental projects of some sort. That's a bet that despite 30-year mortgage rates below 4 percent, more young professionals and families will gravitate for one reason or another to renting a home instead of buying one.

According to CoreLogic, approximately 1.7 million homes in the U.S. are in the foreclosure process and expected to be put up for sale by April of 2013. That number is down 18 percent from the peak of the foreclosure crisis, as fewer loans enter delinquency and more distressed homes are sold.

The so-called shadow inventory represented a 7 month supply on a national level at the current sales pace and does not appear to be a threat to stability of the real estate market. The inventory’s size is used as a gauge of housing-market health because foreclosed homes sell for lower prices which could in turn cause values to drop and discourage home buying. S. Shadow Inventory Shrinks

The number of homeowners going delinquent on their mortgage is dropping and it shows there is an ongoing improvement in some areas, including the Tampa Bay real estate market.

Mortgage delinquencies fell to 8.32 percent in the first quarter of this year, down from a record 10.1 percent in 2010’s first quarter, according a Mortgage Bankers Association report. The number of homes with mortgages at least 90 days late dropped to 1.96 million in April from a January 2010 peak of 3.06 million

Foreclosures and short sales, in which the lender agrees to a sale for less than the balance of the mortgage, accounted for 31 percent of existing-home sales on a national level and account for nearly 45 percent of all home sales in the Tampa Bay area. These types of sales represent only a small fraction of the available inventory of homes for sale but attract buyers because of their discounted prices.