A round-up of the week’s national housing news

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The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that its national Pending Home Sales Index in April rose 10.3% from a year ago, with the Northeast region jumping 17.7%.
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Meanwhile, existing home sales reported by the NAR,increased slightly in April to an annual rate of just under 5 million, up nearly 10% from a year ago.
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S&P/Case-Shiller reported that home prices nationally in the 1st Quarter rose 10%, and in the Boston Metropolitan Area 7%.
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In the April Fannie Mae survey 51% of respondents, up from 48% in March and just 32% a year ago, said they expected home prices to increase over the next year.
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RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure-related sales in the 1st Quarter of 2013 accounted for 21% of total US sales, down from 25% a year ago and a high of 45% in Q1 of 2009. In addition, short sales were 15% of the total, but the volume of short sales declined 35% from a year ago.

I draw two main conclusions from these trends: as overall sales continue to increase, while distressed sales decline, that means that non-distressed sales are rising at a faster rate than the overall numbers; and secondly, since distressed sales take place at a discount to non-distressed sales, the swing to more non-distressed sales will automatically lead to an increase in prices for those Indexes, such as Case-Shiller, which include both types of sale in their calculations.

All median prices calculated and reported by OliverReports exclude distressed sales in order to give a truer comparison of trends in the regular market.
Read RealtyTrac report