About Saint Croix County, WI

The economy added 227,000 jobs in February and surpassed economists’ expectations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment improved in professional and business services, health care and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, manufacturing, and mining. The official unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.3 percent. The gains make it seven-straight months with at least 100,000 jobs added, which is the longest streak since 2005. Continued improvement in the labor market, combined with high affordability and increasing consumer confidence, is key to a significant and sustained housing-market recovery.

Due to low interest rate,s and a limited supply of homes currently on the market, Twin Cities home buyers had signed over 3,700 purchase agreements in February. This is a 34% increase compared with last year at this time and is the best February since '06. This is according to data released by the Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors on 3/12/2012.

Foreclosures continued to represent more than 40% of all sales which caused the median sale price to fall 1.4% to $138k. That was the smallest price decline in 16 months a good sign for what's to come!

For more information on this article visit: http://www.startribune.com/blogs/142331895.html

WELCOME!

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Hudson, WI 54016

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Banks are foreclosing on America's churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.

The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.

In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.

To read more of this article click: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46681498/ns/business-real_estate/#.T1o7sDG-tM0.

Sales of distressed properties, including short sales and REO transactions, put downward pressure on home prices. For this reason, CoreLogic’s Home Price Index measures values including and excluding distressed sales. In January, the index showed a month-over-month decline of 1.0 percent and a 3.1 percent slide from January 2011. But, when excluding distressed sales from the equation, home prices actually gained 0.7 percent from December and dropped less than one percent from the year before. CoreLogic’s price index measures increases and decreases in sales prices for the same homes over time rather than basing their data on all home sales.