By MAURA WEBBER SADOVI

By Dan Levy and Prashant Gopal - Jan 13, 2011 12:00 AM GMT-0500

The number of U.S. homes receiving a foreclosure filing will climb about 20 percent in 2011, reaching a peak for the housing crisis, as unemployment remains high and banks resume seizures after a slowdown, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

"We will peak in foreclosures and probably bottom out in pricing, and that’s what we need to do in order to begin the recovery," Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president, said in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. "But it’s probably not going to feel good in the process."...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/u-s-foreclosure-filings-may-jump-20-this-year-as-crisis-peaks.html

- Thu Jan 13, 2:16 am ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Banks moved to repossess a record 2.87 million US homes in 2010 as the two-year-old mortgage crisis continued to weigh heavily on the economy, foreclosure specialist RealtyTrac said.

Foreclosures hit 2.23 percent of all housing units in the country, or one out of 45, an increase from 2.21 percent in 2009, RealtyTrac said in its 2010 report.

But the pace of foreclosures eased up in the fourth quarter, as banks ran into increasing legal challenges from owners angry that banks had repossessed their homes under a slipshod process...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110113/ts_alt_afp/ushousingbanking

RISMEDIA, January 12, 2011 - CoreLogic, a leading provider of information, analytics and business services released its November 2010 Home Price Index (HPI) which shows that home prices in the U.S. declined for the fourth month in a row. According to the CoreLogic HPI, national home prices - including distressed sales - declined by 5.07% in November 2010 compared to November 2009 and declined by 3.35% in October 2010 compared to October 2009. Excluding distressed sales, year-over-year prices declined by 2.21% in November 2010 compared to November 2009 and declined by 2.24% in October 2010 compared to October 2009. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.
http://rismedia.com/2011-01-11/corelogic-home-price-index-shows-decline-for-fourth-straight-month/

By Hui-yong Yu - Jan 6, 2011

U.S. apartment vacancies fell to a two-year low in the fourth quarter and rents rose, extending a market recovery that began in early 2010, property research firm Reis Inc. said.

The national apartment vacancy rate dropped to 6.6 percent from 8 percent a year earlier and from 7.1 percent in the third quarter, the New York-based company said in a report today. It was the lowest since 2008's third quarter, when the rate was 6.2 percent, according to Reis.

Apartment occupancies have risen as a surge in home foreclosures forced many people to lease apartments. While the 951,000 jobs added to U.S. payrolls from January to November is a fraction of the 8.4 million lost during the recession, "it is far better than the situation in early to mid-2009, when the nation was terminating hundreds of thousands of jobs per month," Reis said.

Effective rents, or what tenants actually pay, rose to an average $986 a month from $964 a year earlier and $981 in the prior quarter, Reis said. Landlords' asking rents also climbed, to $1,042 from $1,026 a year earlier and $1,037 in the third quarter, according to the report...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-06/u-s-apartment-vacancies-fall-to-2-year-low-extending-recovery.html

By Kris Hudson

...Shopping-center vacancy held steady at 10.9% in the fourth quarter, unchanged for the third consecutive quarter, Reis said. That vacancy rate remains at the highest that Reis has tracked since 1991. What is more, net absorption for U.S. shopping centers in the quarter-the net amount of new space leased-amounted to just 92,000 square feet after a gain in the previous quarter of 474,000 square feet.

Foreclosures Reach Record Highs in 2010

Daily Real Estate News  |  January 5, 2011

Foreclosures Reach Record Highs in 2010
Foreclosures were big in 2010 and buyers eager to own them came out in record numbers, Foreclosure Deals, a news source, reports.

Experts are expecting foreclosures to climb even higher in 2011.

"We saw a lot more repossessions, but we also saw record numbers of home buyers at foreclosure sales," said James Foxx, business analyst for Foreclosure Deals. "Foreclosures are selling at rock-bottom prices, and they remain the best way for first-time home buyers or investors to find the best deals. I think it's clear that statistics for foreclosures in 2011 are going to look very similar to those for foreclosure filings 2010..."

http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf/pages/News2011010502

The forecasts are rosy for the CRE market, but systemic headwinds still exist, making this a tough sector to bank on profits.

By Kit R. Roane, contributor

Until recently, the smart money saw commercial real estate as the next asset class to do a number on the economy. Now some believe it is turning into a feather in the recovery's cap. But every bet has its risks -- and in this case, better days may be farther into the future than many investors would like.

The bullish case for the commercial real estate market is that the bad news is baked in, and what's left will likely dissipate as the economy gains steam. Wells Fargo (WFC) sees commercial real estate actually contributing to growth by the second half of this year, driven by more interest in leasing, steadying rents and increasing sales...

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/03/why-commercial-real-estate-is-still-a-gamble/