HomeVestors Looking for Ugliest House

Dallas- based HomeVestors of America, Inc., known as the We Buy Ugly Houses company, announced that national public voting is now under way in the 2011 Ugliest House of the Year contest in six regional real estate markets. They include Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Northern New Jersey and Richmond.

“The contest is a fun way to bring the community together to celebrate ugly houses and their potential to be transformed,” said David Hicks, co-president of HomeVestors of America, Inc. “We all win when ugly houses are improved to become lovely homes. The sellers win, the buyers or tenants win, the neighborhood and community wins.”

Voters can cast their ballots after viewing photos and property descriptions. Nominees for the 2011 “Ugliest House” contest were selected from a call-for-entries inviting all real estate investors in contest markets to submit the ugliest houses they had bought at any time between March 1, 2010 and May 15, 2011. Most of the houses nominated have since been rehabbed and transformed into lovely homes, with some sold on the retail market and others maintained as rental properties.

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Dallas Real Estate Shows Improvement in Latest CaseShiller Index

Data through April 2011, released by S&P Indices for its S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show a monthly increase in prices for the 10- and 20-City Composites for the first time in eight months. 

The 10- and 20-City Composites were up 0.8 percent and 0.7 percent, respectively, in April versus March. Both indices are lower than a year ago; the  10-City Composite fell 3.1 percent and the 20-City Composite is down 4.0 percent from April 2010 levels. 

Six of the 20 MSAs showed new index lows in April – Charlotte, Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami and Tampa.  Thirteen of the cities and both composites posted positive monthly changes. Dallas showed a 0.5 percent increase. 

“In a welcome shift from recent months, this month is better than last - April’s numbers beat March,” says David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices. “However, the seasonally adjusted numbers show that much of the improvement reflects the beginning of the Spring-Summer home buying season. It is much too early to tell if this is a turning point or simply due to some warmer weather.

“Other housing statistics show the same trends. Single-family housing starts were up in May, but still well below their 2010 levels and still very close to their 30-year low. Existing home sales rose in May, but are  still about 15 percent below last year’s pace and about 35 percent below their 2005 pace."

While foreclosures remain a large factor in most parts of the country, the S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default indices show a small decline in the pace of new defaults since last November. Other reports confirm that banks have tightened lending standards in the past year making it harder to qualify for a mortgage despite very low interest rates.