Some good news for the housing market: The Warren Group reports today that single-family home sales jumped almost 12 percent in July from the same month last year.

There were almost 5,000 single-family home sales during the month, the best sales pace for the month of July since 2005.

Unit sales were even higher than June, which historically has been the strongest month for home sales.

So have we hit bottom yet?

Timothy Warren Jr., CEO of The Warren Group, thinks the market’s turned a corner when it comes to sales, but he doesn’t think it has hit bottom in terms of prices. Prices are still declining, he says.

But the rate of decline has slowed. And in some towns – Brookline, Franklin, Westport, Amesbury, Concord – prices have actually increased this year.

Here we go again. The group that was trying to repeal the state’s affordable housing law two years ago is taking another crack it.
The Boston Globe reports today that the Coalition to Repeal 40B has submitted a petition to repeal the state’s Chapter 40B law to the state attorney general’s office.
They tell Globe reporter Jenifer McKim they are more organized and frustrated and they will be able to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot in November 2010.
Last time around, the coalition could barely gather 35,000 signatures. They needed 66,593 to get the question on the ballot.
John Belskis, the leader of the group who filed the petition, told me at the time that they had submitted 72,000 signatures.
“I think this strikes at the heart of the credibility of [supporters of the petition],” Mark Leff, a banker and former president of the state’s homebuilders group, told me back then. “They claimed they had 72,000 and it turns out they didn’t have even half of that. This is consistent with the misrepresentation of Chapter 40B that they’ve been spewing …”
Belskis and crew have railed against the law, saying developers have taken profits that belong to communities and built projects that are too dense and that strain community services.
The law was designed to encourage the development of affordable housing, particluarly in suburban areas that lack it.
There’s no disputing that there are issues with the law and that it’s been controversial. But does Belski and his followers realize what a tough sell this going to be at a time when most people are preoccupied with more pressing concerns - unemployment, foreclosures, etc.
In, Massachusetts, thousands of homeowners have faced foreclosure this year, as The Warren Group reported today.
 Real estate development has stalled. Developers are having a hard time securing financing for already-approved projects. When there’s no development going on that means there are fewer jobs.
How many unemployed residents are going to want to put yet another roadblock to development in this state at a time when the economy could use the boost and people could use the jobs that come with it?

In a Banker & Tradesman article earlier this summer, mortgage brokers and appraisers complained about new rules that were forcing consumers to pay more for property appraisals and also hurting local appraisers’ business and the fees they charge. 

Some Realtors and homebuyers and sellers have shared nightmare stories about appraisers who aren’t familiar with a local market performing appraisals that fall short of the agreed-upon sales price.

Well, today the Appraisal Institute, a group representing professional real estate appraisers throughout the world, took a swipe at appraisers who take assignments in geographic locations that they’re not knowledgeable about.

The group condemned the practice as a violation of professional standards.

“The Appraisal Institute expects and demands its members to strictly adhere to its Code of Professional Ethics,” Appraisal Institute President Jim Amorin said in a press release. “We will take disciplinary action against any member who violates our organization’s geographic competency ethics requirement. Non-member appraisers should strive to achieve the same level of ethical behavior.” 

Some of the ritziest towns in Massachusetts have seen the worst home sales in over two decades.

Only 42 single-family homes were sold in Weston, where the median home price has exceeded $1 million since 2003, in the first half of 2009. The last time sales transactions were so slow for the first two quarters was in 1987, according to The Warren Group.

The other exclusive town beginning with a W – Wellesley – had 95 home sales from January through June. That was the weakest sales pace for the six-month period since The Warren Group started tracking sales in 1987.

Brookline, home to Patriots owner Bob Kraft and other VIPs, experienced a similar trend.

The town where Red Sox owner John Henry wants to build his multimillion dollar estate had only 39 home sales. That’s a huge difference from just five years earlier when 103 homes traded in Brookline during those same months.

And let’s not forget Lincoln, where strict zoning and land-use rules, have helped drive up home prices. The town had 14 home sales in the first six months of 2009. The only year fewer sales were recorded for that period was in 1988.

Real estate agents say it’s a good time to buy, but apparently that message hasn’t gotten buyers to purchase in these desirable towns.

 If the economic downturn has pummeled home prices in many parts of the state, it’s nearly pulverized prices in some of the Bay State’s most popular vacation spots.

 Median selling prices for the state’s top 10 vacation towns – from charming Wellfleet on the Cape to picturesque Stockbridge in the Berkshires, shrunk 26 percent in the first half of 2009 compared to a year earlier. Statewide, the single-family median home price has only declined by about 13 percent during the same period, The Warren Group reported last month.

 Wellfleet’s median home price escalated to $780,000 in the first two quarters of 2004. This year, it plunged to $442,000 – a 43 percent decline. In nearby Orleans, the median home price tumbled to $468,000, down 26 percent from 2005.

 Stockbridge’s median home price, $357,500, is now down to about the same level it was five years earlier. A year ago at the same time it was $550,000.

 Of the homeowners in those 10 vacation communities, Becket property owners appear to have made out better. The median home price in Becket, a small community in the Berkshires that has plenty of summer camps, reached $257,500 in the first six months of 2009, up 5 percent from the same months in 2008 and a 75 percent jump from 2004.

 Keep in mind, however, that home sales in Becket sank from a high of 50 during the first two quarters in 2004 to just 19 this year.

Sales of two- and three-family homes in Massachusetts jumped by double-digit percentages in the first two quarters from a year earlier, according to The Warren Group.

There were 3,404 two- and three-family home sales through June, up about 20 percent from 2,847 last year. A significant number of those properties are being sold by a bank or some other type of financial firm.

As Ian Murphy reports in today’s Banker & Tradesman, bank-owned properties, accounted for nearly a third of the multifamily home sales from January through June.

But bank-owned properties, or REOs as they’re known in the industry, aren’t such a big share of single-family home sales in Massachusetts. Of the single-family homes sold in the first two quarters, only 6.5 percent were REOs — this despite the fact that the majority of foreclosures taking place statewide (60 percent) are of single-family homes.

Are REO multifamily homes moving more briskly because they’re attracting investors? And if so, does that mean investors are confident about this segment of the market? The reduced prices are certainly attractive.

The median selling price for an REO two-family home was only $100,000 in the first quarters. Meanwhile, the median price for the non-REO two-family home was $263,000.

Could it be that banks fearful of flooding the market with even more inventory are holding the single-family homes in their portfolios but dumping the multifamily homes a lot faster knowing that there are willing and able investors out there?

Let’s see what the coming months bring for this segment of the market…