According to the first quarter Zillow Negative Equity Report, the national negative equity rate continued to fall in the first quarter of 2013, dropping to 25.4% of all homeowners with a mortgage from 27.5% in the fourth quarter of 2012. The negative equity rate has been continually falling for the past  four quarters, with the [...]

Zillow’s April Real Estate Market Reports, released today, show that national home values rose 0.5% from March to April to $158,300 (Figure 1). On a year-over-year basis, home values were up 5.2% (Figure 2) from April 2012. The last time national home values were at this level was in June 2004. Rents were up 3.9% [...]

Our most recent Zillow Home Price Expectation Survey (ZHPES) results were released this morning. The survey asks professional forecasters to provide predictions for housing market growth in the near term. The average prediction for appreciation in 2013 is 5.4 percent, with the lowest projection at 3 percent depreciation and the highest at 10.1 percent appreciation. [...]

In a recent post we talked about how for-sale inventory levels are much lower in many markets nationwide than they were last year. When we did this analysis in February we had already started to see signs that inventory constraints were easing in some markets. While inventory levels of for-sale properties are still lower than [...]

In previous quarters, we have produced the breakeven horizon – a meaningful and useful metric to enable consumers and professionals in the real estate industry to make the buy versus rent decision for metros and cities in the United States. We decided to expand geographically this quarter and compute the breakeven horizon for all regions [...]