WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. home prices jumped 12.2 percent in May compared with a year ago, the biggest annual gain since March 2006. The increase shows the housing recovery is strengthening.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday also surged 2.4 percent in May from April. The month-over-month gain nearly matched the 2.6 percent increase in April from March ? the highest on record.
The price increases were widespread. All 20 cities showed gains in May from April and compared with a year ago.
Prices in Dallas and Denver reached the highest level on records dating back to 2000. That marks the first time since the housing bust that any city has reached an all-time high.
Home values are rising as more people are bidding on a scarce supply of houses for sale. Steady price increases, along with stable job gains and historically low mortgage rates, have in turn encouraged more Americans to buy homes.
One concern is that higher mortgage rates could slow home sales. But many economists say rates remain low by historical standards and would need to rise much faster to halt the momentum.
Svenja Gudell, senior economist at Zillow, a home price data provider, said a big reason for the recent price gains is that foreclosed homes make up a smaller proportion of overall sales. Foreclosed homes are usually sold by banks at fire-sale prices.
"Typical home values have appreciated at roughly half this pace for the past several months, which is still very robust," Gudell said.
Gudell said higher mortgage rates and a likely increase in the number of homes for sale in the coming months should slow the pace of price gains and stabilize the housing market.
The index covers roughly half of U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The May figures are the latest available. They are not adjusted for seasonal variations, so the monthly gains reflect more buying activity over the summer.
Despite the recent gains, home prices are still about 25 percent below the peaks they reached in July 2006. That's a key reason the supply of homes for sale remains low, as many homeowners are waiting to recoup their losses before putting their houses on the market.
Dallas and Denver, the two cities that reached record highs, were not hit hard by the housing bust and therefore didn't experience the sharp price swings like cities in Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida.
In Dallas, prices fell only 11.2 percent from their previous peak in June 2007 through February 2009. That's far less than Las Vegas, where prices plummeted by more than half. Since bottoming out, home prices in Dallas have increased nearly 14 percent.
In Denver, prices dropped 14.3 percent from August 2006 until they also hit bottom in February 2009. Since then, they have risen 17.3 percent.
The biggest price gains are occurring in many of the states that experienced the worst housing bust.
Prices jumped 24.5 percent in San Francisco in May from a year earlier, the largest increase. Las Vegas reported the next biggest gain at 23.3 percent, followed by Phoenix at 20.6 percent. All three remain well below their peak prices.
The smallest yearly gains were in New York, at 3.3 percent, followed by Cleveland with 3.4 percent and Washington, D.C. at 6.5 percent.
Higher home prices help the economy in several ways. They encourage more sellers to put their homes on the market, boosting supply and sustaining the housing recovery. And they make homeowners feel wealthier, encouraging consumers to spend more. Banks are also more willing to provide mortgage loans when homes are appreciating in value.
Mortgage rates have surged since early May, though the increase would have had little impact on the current report. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped a full percentage point since early May and reached a two-year high of 4.51 percent in late June.
Mortgage rates jumped after Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Federal Reserve could slow its bond-buying program later this year if the economy continues to improve. The Fed's bond purchases have kept long-term interest rates low, encouraging more borrowing and spending.
In recent weeks, Bernanke and other Fed members have stressed that any change in the bond-buying program will depend on the economy's health, not a set calendar date.
Since those comments, interest rates have declined. The average on the 30-year mortgage was 4.31 percent last week.
The Fed begins a two-day policy meeting Tuesday and could clarify its remarks further when the meeting concludes on Wednesday.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-home-prices-rise-12-2-percent-best-130233769.html
fbi most wanted list stuttering james van der beek dyngus day indonesia quake stephen strasburg shabazz
On Wednesday, the American Gaming Association (AGA) hosted its annual Gaming Industry Washington Fly-In event, in which high-ranking gaming execs hob-nob with federal politicians in a day-long effort to advance policies favorable to the industry. Among the notables gripping and grinning through this year?s junket were MGM Resorts CEO Jim Murren, Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman, International Game Technology CEO Patti Hart, Penn National Gaming president Tim Wilmott and Aristocrat Leisure CEO Jamie Odell. 
Rockefeller warned of the ?consequences of allowing a risky and often addictive form of entertainment to be available on such a ubiquitous platform.? Rockefeller said individual states had done a decent job regulating brick-and-mortar gaming, but ?the internet does not recognize borders or state jurisdictions.? Rockefeller apparently believes the internet does recognize the borders of the United States, or at least has difficulty swimming across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, or sled-dogging across the 49th parallel separating the US from Canada (where sleeper cells tend to freeze to death).
From the team behind Checkthis, Frontback is a straightforward iPhone photo-taking app to capture the moment as it happens. You launch the app, take a photo of what you have in front of you, take a photo of your face and share the digital collage on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. It’s addictive, very easy to understand, and, more importantly, deeply personal. “People tell us that they want to see their friends, not only what their friends see,” co-founder and designer Fr?d?ric Della Faille told me. “We want to own the selfie,” he continued. The Frontback concept isn’t something new. When you make a post on Checkthis, you can add as many photos as you want, as well as text and headlines. Nearly four months ago, Della Faille first posted two pictures on Checkthis of New York’s beautiful landscape and his reaction. He explained the concept of a ‘#frontback’ at the same time. Over the past few months, I started noticing that more and more users were posting #frontback pictures on Checkthis. Like in the early days of Twitter, a user invented a new use case — except that this time around, the user was Checkthis’ co-founder. There wasn’t any sort of #frontback wizard tool to ease the process of creating them. Users were only experiencing with this newfound lingo and artistic rules. It’s all about immersing yourself and putting yourself in your friends’ shoes. Enter Frontback, the app. It was released today in the App Store. Now, there is no whitespace around a Frontback photo, absolutely no chrome. The photo itself doesn’t have any filter. It’s just two square-ish photos on top of each other, filling up the entire screen of your iPhone. It’s all about immersing yourself and putting yourself in your friends’ shoes. “It tells so much more than a photo on Instagram,” Instagram designer Tim Van Damme recently told Della Faille. “Two photos change everything,” Della Faille told me. “On Instagram, you share something because it’s beautiful, but you don’t share the context,” he continued. Frontback isn’t another social network. For now, it’s built on top of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. When a friend joins Frontback, you automatically follow him or her, without having to do anything. And of course, you’ll probably start seeing their Frontback posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as well. Della Faille now hopes that users will launch the Frontback app to capture
