After all, the last big boom market any of us experienced was from 2000 to 2006. During this timeframe, median home prices soared by an average of 85% over just six years. After the crash in 2007, and subsequent multi-year slide, it is hard to imagine another boom market in the making.

But boom markets are growing, and they exist in certain parts of the country due to a surging demand for investment properties.

South Florida is perhaps the most glaring example of a real estate market that is becoming hot.

Home sales over the past year in the Miami metro area have risen by 16%. The median home price has risen remarkably by 15.8% since July, 2010, and existing home inventory is down by 33.3% during the same time period.

The median asking price has also jumped up 20.2% to $219,000 from its low in January, 2011 of $182,260.

One major cause of this surge is an increase in foreign investment. Foreign investors, flush with cash, are entering U.S. markets like South Florida and snapping up properties left and right, knowing that when the market recovers, they will make an enormous profit.

Surprisingly to some, the real estate market in North Carolina is also picking up. Raleigh and Durham, cities in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, are hotbeds of technology and research, providing an ongoing demand for housing that is propelling housing price increases. Median housing prices have fallen by 2.2% in Raleigh, but so has inventory. Also, prices are just 14.7% lower than in other areas, suggesting that this area is very stable compared to most areas in the country.

Along the same lines, several hot markets are emerging in Texas, particularly in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas-Fort Worth. In Houston, the median asking price is up 0.9% year-over-year; in Dallas, that number is 0.1%; in San Antonio, 2.3%. When the rest of the country is primarily in the red, having a combination of decreasing inventory and rising asking prices is a sign of a growing market.

Of course, no market here (with the possible exception of South Florida) is a pre-2007 boom market. But, they are on their way – and like the scores of foreign investors flooding these areas, you could benefit from their eventual growth.

New Boom Markets? They’re There — And You Can Benefit is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

Background: Hamptons Beach, by www.shootandscrawl.com, Front: Luxury home, by www.dailymail.co.uk

Where is the one place in the country that celebrities flock to for vacation? The Hamptons, of course! From world-class wine, beautiful beaches on the Atlantic coast, and incredible real estate properties that are among the highest-priced homes in the country, the Hamptons beckon the rich and famous year after year.

Now, the Hamptons beckon investors to live the high life as well.

If you can afford the mortgage payment on a $940,000 property, then it may be time that you follow the trend and invest in a beach cottage in the Hamptons. Over the last year, home prices have continued to climb in the glorious Hamptons with the median price increasing by nearly $40,000, indicating sustained growth.

With home prices in the Hamptons and portions of California being on the climb, it is evident that the U.S. economy is definitely making a turn-around; as a result, the real estate market is progressing – for high-end, luxury properties, at the very least. The Hamptons and major Californian cities are making quicker recoveries due to the surplus of attractions and glamour and glitz associated with owning one of these beach-side homes. However, other cities across the country are soon to follow suit.

Despite the talks of the debt ceiling disagreements and negative news indicating that the economy is poised for a double dip, there is solid evidence that the real estate market is recovering quicker than over the last few years. Foreclosure rates are declining and home prices are rising—and soon, optimistically, we will be back to “normal.”

So, what does that mean for you? Simple – it’s investment time!

That is right- if you are one of the people looking to take advantage of the real estate market investment opportunities to purchase a new home or beachside cottage, it is time to act. The foreclosure inventory is still large, providing you with endless opportunities and a wide variety of properties to choose from. As the economy continues to recover, the inventory will start to decrease and incredible opportunities will be hard to come by (unless you enlist the help of a foreclosure listing service, that is). What are you waiting for?

Home prices are still low, interest rates are still admirable, and most importantly, there are a ton of investment opportunities – especially luxury properties – in every state across the country. With major cities and popular tourist areas starting to recover, it is time to take the real estate investment leap and start to secure your financial future.

Life is Good in the Hamptons: Luxury Properties on the Rise is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

Buyers have been waiting for assigns that the market has reached bottom, so they can enjoy the lowest prices for these existing homes. Those who prefer to invest in foreclosures are also waiting on the sideline since the large inventory of foreclosures will make it hard for them to profit from their investment.

During the last housing boom, there was frenzy among home construction firms and too many houses were built. Unfortunately, the mortgage industry collapsed under the weight of all the unscrupulous lending practices and resulted to millions of repo homes for sale in the market. It is certain it will take a while to recover from the crash.

According to the report from the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales dropped by 4.8 percent or 4.91 million residential units sold last year. The said figure was a bit lower than the number recorded in 2008, the weakest activity since 1997.

But with economists predicting more employers offering jobs, it is possible the home sales activity, including those involving distressed properties, will be a lot livelier. The Labor Department reported 404,000 seasonally-adjusted applications last week. This is slightly higher compared to last month’s 391,000.

The said report came after the announcement of a research group that believes, based on their data, the strengthening of the economy in the next couple of months. In fact, economic indicator index reveals a 1 percent increase from December 2010. This will certainly bolster home sales and negate the damage inflicted by the foreclosures crisis.

Buyers have been looking into the purchase of foreclosed and short sale properties, considering their relatively more affordable price.

High Foreclosures Rate Deter Existing Home Sales is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

The number of homes in bank owned property listing has dropped in Dallas-Fort Worth, while homes up for sale in the coming August block are also fewer than previous month's total. Lenders had a total of 4,671 houses posted for auction for August, according to the locally-based Foreclosure Listing Service.

This translates to a three percent drop compared with foreclosure filings of the same period one year ago. Compared with July, foreclosed and repossession houses for sale for the coming month are lower by 17%, a development being seen as a promising sign for the local housing industry by real estate market analysts.

However, the good news is still not enough for analysts to declare a market recovery, particularly when mortgage defaults remain at record levels and foreclosures in Texas are still expected to make another wave in the coming months. The number of defaulting homeowners is particularly high in the North Texas area.

Some real estate observers are expecting foreclosure numbers and fixer homes for sale to continue to record high figures for the rest of 2010. They claim that the housing market is not going to rebound overnight. Some worrying implications are also nagging at analysts.

For one, they claim that foreclosure is a lagging economic indicator, which means that improvement in other indicators should be achieved first before foreclosures reach manageable levels. Employment numbers, analysts declare, is the primary indicator that could help pull the housing market up.

In addition, year-to-date figures are actually higher than a year ago at the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with over 42,000 homes falling under foreclosures between January and August 2010 which represent a six percent increase from the same period of a year ago. Furthermore, not all these houses are sold once posted.

Overall, foreclosures in Texas have declined in most areas, including Tarrant and Denton. However, the percentage of decline is still not enough to pull the whole state's housing market towards the recovery path.

Foreclosures in Texas Decline in Some Counties is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

In the chart for June, Nevada posted a foreclosure rate of one foreclosure filing for every 88 homes, while in the chart for the April to June quarter, Nevada posted one filing for every 30 homes. In the entire six-month period, Nevada posted a foreclosure rate of one for every 17 homes.

Although Nevada posted much fewer real estate foreclosures than any of the six other chart-topping states like California, Florida or Arizona, Nevada has been topping the foreclosure rate charts as its foreclosure filings have been overwhelming a substantial percentage of its households. Almost six percent of all homes in Nevada were hit with default, foreclosure or lender repossession notices in the six-month period ended June.

A total of 64,429 foreclosures in Nevada were posted during the six-month period, marking more than 13 percent of decrease from the total in the previous six-month period and more than 6 percent of drop from the same period last year. California and Florida posted much higher numbers of filings, but their foreclosure rates were lower than that of Nevada as these two states are much larger based on population.

In the first half, a total of 17,779 residential units in Nevada became bank owned foreclosures, making upjust 3.37 percent of the 527,906 units nationwide that were taken back by lenders through home auctions for sale, but representing a big portion of households statewide.  

Nevada homeowners continued to suffer the effects of record job losses in May and in June as the state posted the highest unemployment rates for a state during these two months. Despite the slowdown in the filing of new foreclosures in Nevada over the past months, the 13.8-percent jobless rate in May and the 14.2-percent rate in June prevented plenty of distressed homeowners from saving their homes.

Rates of Foreclosures in Nevada Still Highest Despite Slack is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

RealtyTrac’s May 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report showed that notices of foreclosure filings declined by about 50 percent compared with April figures and 20 percent below last year’s May level. The state ranked 33rd in terms of foreclosure filings in May, with one out of 398 houses under REO properties.

Topping Connecticut’s foreclosure activity in May were the counties of New London and Norwich, with 12 each. They were followed by Waterford and Ledyard with 6 each, 4 foreclosures in East Lyme while 2 each for Old Lyme, Colchester, Groton and North Stonington.

Among states in New England, Connecticut fared well than Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Vermont and Maine have the lowest foreclosure rates among New England states.

Nationwide, foreclosure filings were received by 321,480 homeowners in May, a 6 percent decline from the April level but about 18 percent increase from the May 2008 total. This makes one out of 398 properties on the brink of becoming REO properties.

Leading the foreclosure rampage is the state of Nevada with one out of 64 houses receiving a notice of foreclosure, over six times the average national foreclosure rate.

Nevada is followed by California in terms of foreclosure rate with one out of 144 houses receiving foreclosure filings. The state has the second highest repossession rate in the country despite a 4 percent drop in foreclosure activity from the April figures.

The ranking for the third highest state in terms of foreclosure rate went to Florida with one out of 148 houses under threat of foreclosure. Arizona grabbed the fourth place with foreclosure filings made on one household out of 158 units, while Utah settled in the fifth place with one out of 316 houses under threat of foreclosure.

On the other hand, California’s total foreclosure filings of 92,249 was the highest among states, an increase of about 23 percent from last year May’s total. On a positive note, bank foreclosures in California declined 1 percent compared with April’s figures.

The foreclosure crisis, which resulted to a subsequent sale of discounted REO properties, has pulled down average home prices across the country.

Connecticut Ranked 33rd in REO Properties Rate in May is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

Out of the 330 housing markets tracked by IHS, there are 248 markets where houses are undervalued. Four years ago, there were only 108 markets where houses were under-priced.

In markets such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, where home prices shot up during the boom, prices have declined so steeply that large numbers of investors have snapped up repossession property units. Oftentimes they rent the properties back to the previous owners.

IHS economist Jeannine Cataldi said the advantages of high affordability levels are improved consumer confidence and home sales. She said the downsides are increased job losses, higher inventories of unsold homes and repossession property units and consumers? feelings of uncertainty.

The IHS report said that the most undervalued metropolitan area is Vero Beach, Florida, where the median price has dropped to $125,400, a drop of 29.7 percent compared to the first months of 2005. Next is Houma, Louisiana, where the median price of $113,500 represented a drop of 41.4 percent. Third most undervalued is foreclosure-battered Las Vegas, where the median price has fallen by over 46 percent since 2005 and is now under-priced by nearly 41 percent.

IHS analyzed the valuations of houses in metro areas using the three major home affordability factors, namely family income, historical prices and housing densities. Normal home values are compared to actual home prices to determine whether an area is undervalued or over-valued.

The most over-valued metro area is Atlantic City, where the median price of $243,600 is an overvaluation of more than 44 percent. Next is another New Jersey metro area, Ocean City, where the $302,100 median price is an overvaluation of 33.8 percent. The third most overvalued is Wenatchee, Washington, where the median price of $247,100 is more than 29 percent above the normal price.

In the largest metro areas, such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, home prices are slightly undervalued. The median price in New York City is $469,400, which is 3.3 percent below the normal level. Los Angeles, with a median price of $357,100, is undervalued by 6.6 percent. In Chicago, the median price of $220,800 is a 13.2 percent drop from normal values.

In California, among the most foreclosure-battered states, sales of bargain-priced repossession property units have been soaring, based on data from the California Association of Realtors. Inventories of repossession property units and non-foreclosures priced below $500,000 have declined to only three months' worth of supply.

Repossession Property Prices Fall, Affordability Rises is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

According to data released by real estate brokerage company ZipRealty Inc., last month’s supply of repossessed homes for sale went down by 3.6 percent compared with March figures. ZipRealty monitors all types of properties for sale on multiple-listing services, including condominiums, single-family houses and town homes.

Some analysts noted that the continuous drop in the real estate foreclosure properties for sale was an indication that foreclosure has hit bottom. However, others are still uncertain whether foreclosed homes will continue its declining trend or pick up again.

To boost the expectations of some analyst that the number of foreclosure homes for sale will hit bottom, research firm Zelman and Associates explained that property inventories usually increase in April due to the spring house-shopping season in the country. The average rise in April from the previous month has always been 4.8 percent since 1982.

The April inventory of foreclosed home for sale in all 29 metropolitan areas in the country dropped to 21 percent compared to the same month last year.

Meanwhile, data from the National Association of Realtors showed that March inventory of foreclosure homes for sale was estimated at 3.7 million nationwide, a drop of 10 percent from the same period last year. And the figures do not include all bank owned properties foreclosures that are scheduled for sale.

Foreclosed homes owned by government-sponsored enterprises, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. and Federal National Mortgage Corp. accounted for about 35 percent to 50 percent of the foreclosure properties for sale at any given time.

Housing economist Tom Lawler said that the drop in the inventory of repossessed homes for sale indicated that home prices is about to hit the market bottom. He also noted the drop in the housing construction. However, as with some analysts, he is also uncertain how many foreclosure homes will be put on the market for sale in the coming months.

According to Barclays Capital, loan investors and banks are estimated to own 765,500 foreclosed properties as of April, an increase from 629,100 the previous year. Barclays predicted that the inventory of foreclose homes for sale will rise at about 1.3 million halfway through 2010.

Foreclosed Homes for Sale Fell in April is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

The 44-percent increase in foreclosure properties is seen by housing analysts as largely driven by foreclosures filed after mortgage lenders, including Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, ended their foreclosure moratoriums. Other factors are the continued increase in job layoffs and difficulties of homeowners in refinancing their loans.

In the first month of 2009, ForeclosureS.com saw a significant decrease in numbers of foreclosure properties, leading the foreclosure tracking service to say the housing market might be starting to recover.

Alexis McGee, president of ForeclosureS.com, said she hopes the 44-percent increase represents largely foreclosure properties hidden by foreclosure moratoriums launched in the last months of 2008 and first months of 2009.

Pre-foreclosure filings increased by nearly 6 percent to 225,131 units from February levels. For the first three months, there were 604,590 filings, representing a 15-percent increase from the last quarter of 2008 and a 17-percent increase from the first quarter of 2008.

California foreclosures rose by 59 percent, although the total number of foreclosure properties in the state is now much lower than the state’s peak in September 2008, which spurred state legislators to immediately enact a law to stop foreclosures.

Florida foreclosures increased by 33 percent while Arizona foreclosures soared by 45 percent. In charts of foreclosure properties and foreclosure rates compiled by ForeclosureS.com and RealtyTrac, California, Florida and Arizona are among the states on top. With their large inventories of foreclosure properties, home prices in these states also had the steepest declines.

In February, sales of existing homes nationwide increased by 5.1 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors. This increase, found to have been the highest increase in five years, was driven by sales of foreclosure properties priced much below their mortgage loan balances.

The increase in sales of distressed foreclosure properties also spurred new home construction, which stayed quiet for more than eight months due to the glut of foreclosure properties available at bargain prices.

According to the National Association of Home Builders, its sales index for new single-family houses rose from 9 points in March to 14 points in April, the highest level in a six-month period. NAHB economist David Crowe hopes the increase is a sign of the start of the housing sector’s recovery from the problem of foreclosure properties.

Foreclosure Properties Nationwide Up by 44% in March is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.

RealtyTrac said that foreclosure houses for sale jumped to 290,000 or 30 percent from the previous year. The agency has been compiling and collecting foreclosure data from over 2,200 counties since 2005.

RealtyTrac reported that one per 440 homeowners received foreclosure homes filings last month. The total foreclosure homes filings was about 6 percent higher from the January 2009 data.

February foreclosure homes filings were the third highest following data of August and December last year. Last month's increase was in sharp contrast with the reported dropped in foreclosure and pre foreclosure filings in January.

Nationwide data showed that the total number of distressed foreclosure properties in January dropped 25.7 percent to 72,694 from the previous month's 97,841.

Pre-foreclosure filings also dropped almost 12 percent from December to January from 190,467 to 166,860.

The February increase is blamed on delays in the foreclosure process which prolonged the housing crisis

It has been noted that foreclosure homes filings increased after the 45-day voluntary foreclosure moratorium ended last week of January in Florida.

RealtyTrac reported that a 90-day foreclosure homes moratorium delayed proceedings in New York in January, resulted to a whopping 23 percent increase when foreclosure activity resumed in February.

According to RealtyTrac senior vice president Rick Sharga, there is not progress in the fight to end the housing crisis despite widespread efforts to help owners of distressed properties.

As more foreclosure moratoriums are scheduled to end, including that of J.P. Chase and Co., the number of repossessed homes is expected to increase throughout 2009.

Meanwhile, Bank of America Corp. said that it will extend its foreclosure moratorium program on a weekly basis as it continues to assess borrowers' potential eligibility under the Obama Administration's program aimed at stabilizing the housing market.

Meanwhile, Sharga said that option-arm and Alt-A loans estimated to be worth between $60 to $70 billion will start to reset in the coming quarter. He pointed out that the scheduled reset, coupled with the continuing rise of unemployment rate, will brought further misery to about 3 million distressed homeowners who are expected to receive foreclosure homes notice this year.

On the other hand, Mortgage Master Inc. Chief Executive Officer Leif Thomsen explained that some foreclosures are necessary as many homeowners bought properties that they could not afford to pay in the first place. He advised these troubled homeowners to accept their loss and try to move on.

February Foreclosure Homes Up is a post from: Foreclosure Magazine - Read more about how does foreclosure work.