A study released Tuesday said the majority of home values around the western United States, including Colorado, dropped in the past year — though the region’s homeowners were more likely to believe their home’s value increased than homeowners in other regions.

Aurora homeowners may be on the winning side of all of these arguments, according to local Realtors.

The study, by the online real estate information clearing house Zillow.com, said that in the West, homeowners were the least realistic about their own home’s values, with 28 percent believing they increased in the past 12 months, when, according to Zillow, just 17 percent of homes in the region actually increased in value. The study said 78 percent of the homes in the region saw their values fall, while five-percent stayed the same.

Full story is availalbe on Aurora Sentinel

The Housing Partnership, a Portsmouth nonprofit organization, is offering a free HUD approved homebuyer education seminar in Rochester through its Homeward Bound program.

The Rochester session will be held Saturday, Nov. 21, from 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The session is hosted by Rochester Housing Authority and will be held at the Karen L. Grossman Community Room, located at 9 Cold Spring Manor, off Brock Street. Preregistration is required. Sign up online at www.housingpartnership.org/HBregistration.html. Phone and e-mail registrations also accepted at (603) 766-3120, or terryhousingpartnership.org.

More details are available on foster.com

More than 36,000 families in Utah are behind on their mortgages and another 13,000 are in the foreclosure process, but the state’s share of problem loans remains well below the national average, a new report shows.

About 3 percent of 434,983 mortgages were in the foreclosure process in the state at the end of the third quarter, a rate that’s been increasing but that remains well below the national foreclosure rate of nearly 4.5 percent, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday.

Full story is available on The Salt Lake Tribune

Bob Kean really likes the Roland Park house he carefully restored. But now – as he searches for a job to replace the one he lost – five bedrooms and 4,200 square feet strike him as a luxury he can’t afford.

His plan: Sell and move into a much smaller home with much smaller costs. Cheaper utility bills. Lower property taxes. Little or no mortgage.

Full story is available on The Baltimore Sun

A recovery in U.S. housing will have to wait at least until next year.

The outlook for the home market dimmed this week as residential construction and mortgage applications fell and loan delinquencies reached a record.

“I don’t think the housing crisis is over,” Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com, said in a telephone interview. “I think we’re going to see another leg down.”

Full story is available on Bloomberg

Marc and Elizabeth Yavinsky have listed for sale a five-bedroom, 4.5-bath home at 1120 Breakers West Way in Unincorporated Royal Palm Beach for $1.529 million.

The 6,167-square-foot residence was built in 1988 in the Mayacoo Lakes Country Club neighborhood. Heather Smith of Breakers Palm Beach Realty is the listing agent.

Full story is available on Block Shopper

Home foreclosures are likely to keep climbing through all of next year despite stabilizing housing prices in some areas, a major lender group said Thursday as it reported that the level of delinquencies and repossessed homes had jumped to a record.

One in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure as of Sept. 30, putting that quarterly delinquency measure at its highest level since 1972, when the Mortgage Bankers Assn. began reporting it. At the beginning of this year, 1 in 10 loans was past due or in foreclosure.

Full story is available on Los Angeles Times.

Bay Area home prices rose nearly 7 percent last month from September as foreclosures comprised a smaller percentage of sales and the higher-end market saw a modest increase in activity.

Analysts caution that while the numbers may show the housing market moving toward a more traditional model – with fewer distressed properties and bargain-basement buyers – they must be taken in the context of historic price declines.

Full story is available on San Francisco Chronicle

About one in seven American households with mortgages is behind on payments or in foreclosure, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is up from about one in 10 a year ago.

The group reported Thursday that 14.4% of first-lien mortgages on one-to-four-family homes in the third quarter were 30 days or more overdue or in the foreclosure process. That is the highest rate since the MBA began reporting such data in 1972, and works out to about 7.5 million households at risk of losing homes. The percentage is up from 10% a year earlier and 7.3% two years ago.

Full story is available on The Wall Street Journal