The Energy and Green Building Week of the 2012 Building Safety Month campaign launched in May spotlighting the International Green Construction Code (IgCC), the first green code for constructing and remodeling houses and buildings. The IgCC aims to make buildings more energy and resource efficient, benefitting health, safety, and community well-being. The Energy and Green…

McGraw-Hill Construction recently released its SmartMarket Report, which predicts that the green-homes sector will rapidly expand in the next four years, with its market share rising as high as 38 percent by 2016. It stood at 17 percent at the start of 2012. Although four years out, the forecast nevertheless signals a good year for…

While March marked a downturn in single-family-home sales, contract signings on existing-home sales were up, rising 4.1 percent over the previous month’s level, according to the latest National Association of Realtors (NAR) data. The change bumped NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index up four points to 101.4, 12.8 percent better than its year-ago level. The figure,…

Sales of newly built, single-family homes fell 7.1 percent in March, according to HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and U.S. Commerce Department data, contravening industry expectations of continuing expansion following February’s stronger-than-expected sales. The decline, however, was probably not due to a weak market. According to Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home…

This 2012 will be a banner year for existing-home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which is predicting a 7- to 10-percent leap to the highest level in five years, based on an irregular but escalating sales profile in the first quarter of the year. The forecast signals a good year for…

Housing affordability remains at a record high not seen since record keeping debuted in 1970, thanks to the happy confluence of median home price, median family income, and average mortgage interest rate. National Association of Realtors (NAR) president Moe Veissi pointed out that the prevailing housing figures strongly endorse buyer opportunities in the present market….

Sales and investment in vacation homes soared in 2011, reported the National Association of Realtors (NAR) 2012 Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, noted that investors fully exploited the benevolent market conditions (for buyers) that dominated throughout 2011. “During the past year investors have been swooping into the market to…

Consolidating employment growth reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, house-price appreciation data from Freddie Mac, and single-family housing permit growth statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, the latest National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/First American Improving Markets Index (IMI) numbers reveal that 35 states are now represented in the index. Great news of course…

Now is a good time to buy a home. That, according to Fannie Mae, is the take-away from its March housing survey, which found that 73 percent of respondents believed that the present offers all the right conditions to make the home purchase. The figure is an improvement over the 70 percent in February—and continuing…

Lawrence Yun, National Association of Realtors (NAR) chief economist, has delivered some big news: The latest quarterly commercial real estate figures show that all major commercial real estate sectors are experiencing improved fundamentals. The announcement has the real estate sector and the agents themselves who have a real estate license or a real estate continuing…

The wind in the sails of the housing recovery can partially be attributed to the declining unemployment rate. This, in essence, is what Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke imparted when he spoke recently on housing recovery and labor health at the National Association for Business Economics Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The affirmation by no…

A sign of the times: increasingly more real estate agents are optimistic about the prospect of a rally in the real estate industry and expect home values to increase. This was the major take-away from a recent national survey of real estate agents conducted by HomeGain. For industry professionals, especially those who have real estate…

Based on the new Census Bureau data for the first half of 2011, the average size of homes increased along with the number of four+-bedroom homes over 2010 figures. The real estate sector and the agents themselves who have a real estate license or a real estate continuing education—specifically California Real Estate CE for those…

Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) announced this March that it has revised its forecast to “Home prices are bottoming now,” following a better-than-forecast performance in the last quarter of 2011. Originally, BofAML forecast home prices would drop 8% starting in the second quarter of 2011 all the way to the first quarter of 2013. Home…

Time to break out the bubbly. Housingpredictor.com has reported that 55 cities are forecast to have higher home values this year than in the last five years as communities in 15 states stabilize their housing markets with positive home sales and home values. Following last year’s debacle for the construction sector, one of its worst…