The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and U.S. Department of the Treasury have released the nation's April 2012 Housing Scorecard, which shows ‘promising signs of stability,’ albeit in the context of a ‘mixed’ forecast.
According to the scorecard, mortgage delinquencies have declined for four consecutive months and remain well below year-ago levels. Also, sales of existing homes in the first quarter were 5.3% higher than they were a year ago, but home prices were still generally soft in many mortgage markets.
Inventories of homes for sale are at their lowest levels in years, according to HUD and the Treasury. At the current sales pace, it would take 5.3 months to sell the current months' supply of new homes for sale and 6.3 months to sell the current supply of existing homes.
The Obama administration says nearly 6 million loan modifications were initiated between April 2009 and the end of March 2012, including more than 1.8 million trial modifications under the Home Affordable Modification Program and more than 1.3 million FHA loss mitigation and early delinquency interventions.
The full April 2012 report is available HERE.