Housing markets

Americans' decades-long love affair with the U.S. West appears to be souring as high housing costs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle encourage migration to the South, a new analysis shows.

It's possible that the remaining litigation could be resolved by mid-year, wrote Keefe, Bruyette and Woods analyst Ryan Tomasello

Equity-rich mortgages — those that have a loan-to-value ratio of 50% or lower, meaning the borrower's equity stake is at least half the property's value — decreased to 46.1% from 47.4% the prior quarter, according to the US Home Equity & Underwater Report published by real estate data firm ATTOM. 

The company's building unit saw income slow, but the mortgage banking division number accelerated on both a quarterly and annual basis.

A national gauge of prices climbed 0.2% in November from October, according to seasonally adjusted data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller. That's slower than the 0.6% monthly gain in October.

A potential buyer with a budget of $3,000 per month for their payments is now able to afford an approximately $453,000 home.

The National Association of Realtors' index of contract signings increased 8.3% to 77.3 after holding at a record low a month earlier, according to data out Friday.

Purchases of new single-family homes increased 8% to a 664,000 annual pace last month, after an upward revision to November's figure, government data showed Thursday.

While becoming more popular in the past year as mortgage rates have increased, the differential is small between those that did and didn't pay points for a permanent buydown, Freddie Mac said.

The real estate markets where prices are expected to rise the most this year will see an average increase of 5.14%.