US home prices forecast to rebound 4% a year, Fiserv report says
Home prices in major urban areas are slightly on the rise, showing an improvement in real estate sales in the United States. However, some analysts believe this only reflects the common patterns of sales rising in the spring after a slow winter, and not that real estate is actually improving.
US home prices are expected to begin rebounding this year and increase by nearly 4 percent a year for the next five years, according to a new forecast.
Fiserv, a financial analytics company, predicts that the median price for homes sold in 2012 will drop by 0.8 percent compared with 2011, but then increase 4.2 percent in 2013 and continue to gain an average of 4 percent a year in the years after that, CNN reported.
More from GlobalPost: Slow recovery creeps along in US housing market
Some areas will experience more growth than others, with 10 metro-area housing markets projected to record double-digit price increases through 2013, according to CNN.
Many house hunters have already started to pounce on bargains, and markets are also beneffiting from record-low mortgage rates, David Stiff, Fiserv's chief economist, told CNN.
More from GlobalPost: US retail sales slow in April
"As demand for houses ramps up, construction activity will increase and residential investment will begin to make a substantial contribution to the recovery and GDP overall," he said in a press release.
Separately, market researcher CoreLogic said Tuesday that US home prices rose 0.6 percent in March from February, the first month-over-month increase since July, USA Today reported.
According to Realtor.com, Florida has more cities than any other state that show the strongest signs of a housing recovery.
Phoenix, Miami and Orlando are the top turnaround cities in its most recent analysis of housing data, based on those markets' improvements in the first quarter compared with a year earlier.
Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you. We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll help us unlock a matching gift of $67,000!