Wall Street Journal – October 15, 2011

U.S. house prices have plunged by nearly a third since 2006, and homeownership rates are falling at the fastest pace since the Great Depression.

The good news? Two key measures now suggest it’s an excellent time to buy a house, either to live in for the long term or for investment income (but not for a quick flip). First, the nation’s ratio of house prices to yearly rents is nearly restored to its prebubble average. Second, when mortgage rates are taken into consideration, houses are the most affordable they have been in decades.

Two of the silliest mantras during the real-estate bubble were that a house is the best investment you will ever make and that a renter “throws money down the drain.” Whether buying is a better deal than renting isn’t a stagnant fact but a changing condition that depends on the relationship between prices and rents, the cost of financing and other factors.

But the math is turning in buyers’ favor. Stock-oriented folks can think of a house’s price/rent ratio as akin to a stock’s price/earnings ratio, in that it compares the cost of an asset with the money the asset is capable of generating. For investors, a lower ratio suggests more income for the price. For prospective homeowners, a lower ratio makes owning more attractive than renting, all else equal.

Nationwide, the ratio of home prices to yearly rents is 11.3, down from 18.5 at the peak of the bubble, according to Moody’s Analytics. The average from 1989 to 2003 was about 10, so valuations aren’t quite back to normal.

But for most home buyers, mortgage rates are a key determinant of their total costs. Rates are so low now that houses in many markets look like bargains, even if price/rent ratios aren’t hitting new lows. The 30-year mortgage rate rose to 4.12% this week from a record low of 3.94% last week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. (The rates assume 0.8% in prepaid interest, or “points.”) The latest rate is still less than half the average since 1971.

As a result, house payments are more affordable than they have been in decades. The National Association of Realtors Housing Affordability Index hit 183.7 in August, near its record high in data going back to 1970. The index’s historic average is roughly 120. A reading of 100 would mean that a median-income family with a 20% down payment can afford a mortgage on a median-price home. So today’s buyers can afford handsome houses—but prudent ones might opt for moderate houses with skimpy payments.

For example, the median home in the greater Phoenix market, including houses, condos and co-ops, costs $121,700, according to Zillow.com. With a 20% down payment and a 4.12% mortgage rate, a buyer’s monthly payment would be about $470. Rent for a comparable house would be more than $1,100 a month, according to data provided by Zillow.com.

Of course, all of this assumes mortgages are available—no given now that lending standards have tightened. But long-term data on down payments and credit scores suggest conditions are more normal than many buyers think, according to Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow. “If you have good credit, a job and a down payment, you can get a mortgage,” Mr. Humphries says. “There’s more paperwork and scrutiny than five years ago, but things are pretty much like they were in the ’80s and ’90s.”

Not all housing markets are bargains. Mr. Humphries says Zillow has developed a new price/rent ratio that uses estimates for each individual property rather than city medians, to better reflect the choices facing typical buyers. A fresh look at the numbers suggests Detroit and Miami are plenty cheap for buyers, with price/rent ratios of 5.6 and 7.7, respectively. New York and San Francisco are more expensive, with ratios of 17.6 and 17.2, respectively. The median ratio for 169 markets is 10.7.

For investors seeking income, one back-of-the-envelope way of seeing how these numbers stack up against yields for other assets is to divide 1 by the price/rent ratio, resulting in a rent “yield.” The median market’s rent yield is 9.3% and Detroit’s is 17.9%.

Investors would then subtract for taxes, insurance, upkeep and other expenses—costs that vary widely. But suppose total costs were 4% of the purchase price. That would still leave a 5.3% rent yield in the typical market. With the 10-year Treasury yield at 2.2% and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index carrying a dividend yield of 2.1%, rents for residential housing in many markets look attractive.

A few caveats are in order. First, not all transactions are average ones. Even in low-priced markets, buyers should shop carefully. Second, prices could fall further. Celia Chen, a senior director at Moody’s Analytics, expects prices to drop 3% before bottoming early next year and rising slowly thereafter. “If the economy slips back into recession, however, we could easily see a 10% drop,” Ms. Chen says.

And property “flipping” can be dangerous even when prices are rising. That is because, absent a real-estate boom, house price gains simply aren’t that exciting. Research by Yale economist Robert Shiller suggests houses more or less track the rate of inflation over long time periods.

Houses aren’t the magic wealth creators they were made out to be during the bubble. But when prices are low, loans are cheap and plump investment yields are scarce, buyers should jump.

Rate on 30-year mortgage falls to record 4.01%

Fixed mortgage rates have fallen to historic new lows for a fourth straight week and are likely to fall further.

The average on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 4.01 percent from 4.09 percent this week, Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s the lowest rate since the mortgage buyer began keeping records in 1971. The last time long-term rates were lower was in 1951, when most long-term home loans lasted just 20 or 25 years.

The average on a 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular refinancing option, ticked down to 3.28 percent. Economists say that’s the lowest rate ever for the loan.

Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. The 10-year yield has risen this week to around 2 percent. A week ago, it touched 1.74 percent – the lowest level since the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis started keeping daily records in 1962. As recently as July, the 10-year yield exceeded 3 percent.

Rates on mortgages could fall further after the Federal Reserve announced last week that it would take further action to try to lower long-term rates.

The warm weather homebuying season has kept prices moving up, but Clear Capital says the rate of appreciation is already slowing and weak consumer confidence points to a stormy rest of the year.

The “company’s latest report shows that home prices rose 4.0 percent over the four-month period ending in August when compared to the previous three months – an assessment Clear Capital refers to as a rolling quarter.

The company notes, however, that the recent gains over the summer months have not been enough to recoup longer-term declines, with national home prices still 6.2 percent below last year’s levels.

Dr. Alex Villacorta, director of research and analytics at Clear Capital, points out that the short-term gains reported in recent months are coming off of the record lows of winter.

“With summer coming to a close and the price gains clearly starting to level off, the market is at a critical juncture as to whether it can avoid another significant downturn into the slower buying seasons of fall and winter,” Villacorta said.

According to Clear Capital, low consumer confidence and a continued high unemployment rate support the company’s projection of downward home price movement for the remainder of 2011.

“The latest readings on consumer confidence paint an ominous picture that at present, consumers are still not ready to risk jumping into the market despite very low mortgage rates and very affordable home prices,” Villacorta added.

Based on Clear Capital’s latest report, the Midwest region leads the nation with a seasonal quarterly home price gain of 7.3 percent, buoyed by solid improvement in Chicago and the Ohio markets in particular.

In the Northeast home prices rose 4.9 percent, and in the South quarterly appreciation came in at 3.5 percent.

Home prices in the Western region of the U.S. were up just 0.7 percent. Clear Capital says with economic uncertainty and significant distressed sales activity affecting the West, this small gain may potentially represent peak price growth in the region for the rest of 2011.

Home prices in all four regions came in well below their readings at this time last year, with the smallest annual dip in the Northeast at 2.0 percent.

Jacksonville, Florida replaced Detroit as the “lowest performing” major market, posting a -2.7 percent quarterly price change. Eleven of the 15 markets on the low end of the price performance spectrum reside in the western part of the country.

Cleveland’s rolling quarter price gains jumped to 19.2 percent based on data through August, pushing the market to the top of Clear Capital’s “highest performing” list. The company says Cleveland’s large gains reflect vast differences in its REO composition between the winter and the spring-summer homebuying seasons.

Demand for housing has been suppressed in the four-year period from 2007 to 2010. A review of household formation shows an annual increase of 500,000 to 600,000 over these years. A more normal gain would be 1 to 1.2 million each year. (As a quick clarification on households, one household corresponds to one housing unit. A single person living in an apartment is considered one household. A family of five people living under one roof is also considered one household.) Population growth has not slowed, rising consistently by around 3 million each year, but household formation has.

That is due to an increasing number of people deciding, or being forced by circumstance, to live with others. Rather than one roommate, many now have two. Some recent college graduates have returned home to live with their parents. Painful foreclosures have also forced people to find temporary arrangements with friends and relatives.

Living in tight spaces is not sustainable. More people cannot be comfortably shoved into existing households. Aside from the desire to be independent and to move away from temporary living situations, there is the issue of “familiarity breeding contempt,” as the saying goes. It is just a matter of time before household formation returns to its historic normal growth of 1 to 1.2 million each year. There could even be more-than-normal household formation for a few years from both normal population growth and from people leaving temporary arrangements. A stronger economy and job prospects will help in restoring normal household formation.

This suppressed housing demand is like a coiled spring. But when will it pop? This year? Next?

When it does pop there will be a rush of home buyers and renters into the market. Inventory will fall, home prices will rise. Rents will rise. Home builders will need to quickly ramp up production and hire construction workers. Home builders are expected to add only 770,000 new units this year, which is well below the one million new demand from household formation, but still up from the 500,000 range of the past three years.