IRVINE, Calif. – Jan. 14, 2013 – CoreLogic, a real estate market research firm, released its CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) report today.  It found a 7.5 percent increase in home prices during 2012, the largest home price increase since 2006.
CoreLogic projects home prices to increase 6 percent in 2013.  Factors pushing the increase are greater affordability fueling steady demand, a lower level of foreclosure property sales and a lower inventory of unsold homes.

Among Core Logic Findings:
• Total homes sales increased 6 percent to 4.2 million in 2012, up from 3.9 million in 2011 for the first increase since 2005.

• Non-distressed homes sales increased 11 percent to 3.2 million.

• New sales increased 3 percent to nearly 300,000.

• Home price growth happened in many U.S. locations.

• REO (foreclosure) sales declined more than 20 percent to 600,000, the third annual consecutive decline.

• Short sales rose 23 percent to 370,000 units, the highest level since the real estate downturn began.

• Serious delinquencies declined by nearly 300,000 loans in 2012, which drove the seriously delinquent rate down to 6.9 percent, from 7.4 percent in 2011. Since the January 2010 peak, serious delinquencies have declined by 1 million loans.

The housing market enters 2013 poised for further recovery

• Rising home prices will continue to slowly release pent-up supply as underwater borrowers are unlocked and opportunistic sellers begin to provide relief to tight inventories.

• Geographic diversity in home price growth will continue.

• CoreLogic expects continued market improvement in serious delinquencies.

• Despite improvements and a positive outlook for the coming year, uncertainty remains on the impact of qualified mortgage and qualified residential mortgage requirements.

A full copy if the January CoreLogic MarketPulse report is available on CoreLogic website http://www.corelogic.com/downloadable-docs/MarketPulse_2013-January.pdf