During the Inquisition, the first step in extracting a confession or recantation of heresy was to show the accused the instruments to be used in the next stage. A glance at tongs, or the rack, and many would sing on the spot.

So it was this week. The Fed inflicted no pain at all, just talked about the potential decision ahead, not yet made, considering at some point, maybe, depending, and if made, whenever, just a little pinch.

You’d have thought every bond trader on the planet had been hanged upside down by precious body parts. However, even their shrieking was hard to hear above the yammering by the alternate-universe mobs.

First, reality, then the choirs of confusion.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, visibly exhausted, did very smart things this week. Talk of tapering quantitative easing (“QE”) exposes any parties excessively leveraged, deflating the bubble potential in QE.

And some are: A group of REITs has a couple hundred billion bet on MBS leveraged with short borrowing, and junk bonds are too hot. Stocks … all you need to know about silliness: Today marks the first three-day decline in stocks in all of 2013.

New York Fed President William Dudley laid out specifically how the Fed will exit the emergency.

• First: Taper buys of Treasurys and MBS (and he said tapering is even-money with buying in bigger quantity).
• Second: Stop reinvesting payments received on bonds.
• Third: Begin to raise the overnight federal funds rate.
• Fourth: Maybe, if the economy really runs hot, sell some Treasurys, but in almost all events hold MBS until they mature.

Most professional observers chewed on the Fed all week long for sending a garbled message.

Look back a ways. Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan was famous for obfuscation except when he really had something to say, and ran a one-man band. All others at the Fed were forbidden to speculate on policy.

In his last three years of an overlong, 17-year stay, Greenspan failed to listen to others about a credit bubble that damned near killed us.

Bernanke introduced faculty-club style — everyone is allowed to argue their opinions and to vent. Far too many Fed-watchers still chase around the outlying speakers, the way dim hunting dogs can’t lay off rabbits.

The Fed did nothing more this week than to acknowledge new doubts lying in plain sight.

Nobody knows the slope or durability of recovery. At best, the economy might be entering the outer edge of self-sustainability.

In prior periods when the economy ran away from the Fed, the absolute precondition was a surge in credit, which today without QE is still contracting. Inflation appears to be falling for several reasons, but Bernanke was careful to say this week that long-term expectations are not declining.

Doubt creates volatility — true, up-down-up-down volatility.

The 10-year T-note, stabilized by QE in the second half of 2012 in the range 1.60 percent-1.85 percent, took three months this year to blow up to 2.05 percent, then 50 days to run all the way back down to 1.65 percent. From there, it zipped back up to 2.05 percent in just 20 days.

Expect more short-cycle wockety-tong.

Still, mortgage rates have yet to cross 4 percent, even though the yield spread between mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and 10-year Treasurys has widened. You can be certain the Fed does not like that widening. It’s a sign of ongoing distress in markets that still prefer ultimate safety.

Making all of this so difficult to process: the expensive-suited, highly regarded and well-connected so seriously interviewed on the telly. They may as well be standing behind your head slamming a ladle into a skillet.

They’ve just about worn out the money-printing-inflation line, so now ooze to arguing the inevitable failure of central banks.

Another group intones the failure of austerity and the need for stimulus, although the world is drowning in the deflationary excess production and debt born of runaway stimulus.

One top twit after another imputes Japan’s situation to ours, or to Europe’s, or to China’s, or vice versa. All four are very different.

The U.S. economy is uncertain enough without adding imaginary threats from overheating or Fed tightening. Or by offering fantasy prescriptions. More volatility, yes, but slow recovery and low rates probably for years ahead.

Lou Barnes is a mortgage broker and nationally syndicated columnist based in Boulder, Colo. He can be reached at lbarnes@pmglending.com.

One of the first people to warn about homes becoming overvalued during the boom, finance and economics blogger Bill McBride, says housing’s future is “so bright, (he’s) gotta wear shades.”

With household formation expected to pick up, and trends in new-home sales and housing starts indicating increased investment in real estate, McBride thinks housing and the overall U.S. economy is in great shape.

Calculated Risk’s Bill McBride talks with Inman News about some of the metrics that make him optimistic about housing’s future.

Given his take that household formation is solidly on the rise, McBride says new-home sales and housing-start numbers are likely to double from current levels before the recovery’s over.

Source: Calculated Risk

New-home sales have risen steadily in recent months, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 454,000 in April. That’s up 29 percent from a year ago, but there’s still lots of room for continued growth from post-recession lows, McBride said.

Source: Calculated Risk

McBride, who founded the finance and economics blog Calculated Risk in 2005, is not fazed by the fact that housing starts dipped 16.5 percent from March to April, to a lower-than-expected seasonally adjusted annual rate of 853,000. Much of the decline was due to the volatile multifamily housing sector, he says, and housing starts were still up 13.1 percent from a year ago.

Given that permits for single-family housing hit a five-year high in the first quarter of 2013, McBride’s take matches the trend. 

Source: Calculated Risk

McBride also expects existing-home sales and new-home sales to return to their historic ratio of eight existing homes sold for every one new home sold.

The ratio — which he’s dubbed the “distressing gap,” because of the difficulty builders had competing with distressed properties — hit a high of 17-to-1 in 2010, and is already back to 11-to-1.

McBride agrees with housing analyst Ivy Zelman’s characterization of the current market conditions: “We’re in Nirvana for housing.”

Connect with Bill McBride on Twitter.

What are you seeing in your neck of the woods? Are housing and construction starting to take off?

Are taxpayers in some parts of the country more honest than those in others? If you said yes, you’d be right.

A recent nationwide survey of more than 3,300 self-employed taxpayers by the IRS National Taxpayer Advocate found few communities with high levels of tax compliance by sole proprietors.

But it found lots of communities with low levels of compliance. The places with the highest levels of noncompliance were towns and neighborhoods in or near San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.

Low compliance communities included some of the wealthiest places in the United States, such as Beverly Hills, Calif.; Newport Beach, Calif.; New Carrollton, Md.; and College Park, Ga.

Communities with low levels of tax compliance by small-business owners. Source: Source: IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service.

In contrast, high-compliance communities tended to be poorer. These included the Aleutian Islands; West Somerville, Mass.; Portersville, Ind.; and Mott Haven (a neighborhood in the Bronx, N.Y.).

By the way, the IRS says it does not choose which taxpayers to audit based on where they live, so you won’t lower your audit risk by moving to the Aleutian Islands.

Does this mean wealthy people are more dishonest than the poor? Maybe. But it could also mean that they have more opportunities to cheat on their taxes.

The Taxpayer Advocate’s analysis of the survey results revealed the following key findings:

• Taxpayers in the low-compliance group made more money than those in the high-compliance group: $87,000 as compared with about $46,000 for the high-compliance group.
• Taxpayers in the high-compliance group expressed more trust in government and the IRS.
• Very few of the low-compliance communities were in the Midwest.
• Those in the low-compliance group expressed less trust in preparers.
• Taxpayers in the low-compliance group were more likely to participate in local organizations.
• Both groups professed a moral obligation to report income accurately.
• Most agreed the tax rules are so complicated that it is very difficult to get a tax return exactly right.
• Taxpayers in construction-related and real estate-related industries were less compliant than those in other industries, while taxpayers in professional and technical service industries appeared to be more compliant.
• The low-compliance group had larger businesses: an average of about seven employees, as compared with about four for the high-compliance group.

The Taxpayer Advocate concluded from all this that the best way to ensure higher compliance with the tax laws is to “promote trust in government, the law and the IRS.”

The Advocate suggested that means to accomplish this might include tax simplification, an expansion of taxpayer protections and remedies, and taxpayer education about their government.

(Source: IRS Taxpayer Advocate Service, Factors Influencing Voluntary Compliance by Small Businesses: Preliminary Survey Results.)

Stephen Fishman is a tax expert, attorney and author who has published 18 books, including “Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Contractors, Freelancers and Consultants,” “Deduct It,” “Working as an Independent Contractor,” and “Working with Independent Contractors.” He welcomes your questions for this weekly column.

Hanley Wood LLC, a publisher of news and producer of events for homebuilders, has acquired the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo from the U.S. Green Building Council. The U.S. Green Building Council will continue to produce programming for the event under a “strategic partnership.”

Hanley Wood, whose stable of publications includes Builder Magazine, announced in January that it had acquired Metrostudy, a provider of primary and secondary market information to the housing and related industries. Source: businesswire.com.

Officials in Putnam County, N.Y., have decided to hire real estate agents to sell homes that are seized when their owners fail to pay their property taxes.

Traditionally, tax-delinquent homes are sold to investors at auctions. But Putnam County — located in New York’s Hudson Valley — is hoping to get a better deal for 77 parcels it plans to sell in order to collect $4 million in back taxes.

A batch of 20 properties soon to come on the market includes a vacation cottage priced at $30,000 and a ranch home for $160,000. Source: lohud.com.

An attorney for an 87-year-old grandmother who accused real estate mogul Donald Trump of talking her into buying two $1 million condos at the height of the real estate boom tried to paint Trump in “extreme terms — as villainous and greedy,” AP reports.

Shelly Kulwin displayed a giant photograph of Trump in federal court, saying he wouldn’t want his own grandmother to be in the same room with him. Kulwin portrayed his client, Jacqueline Goldberg, as a former waitress who’d worked her way through college and lived according to her Depression-era values.

In the end, the jury wasn’t convinced that Goldberg was deceived by Trump’s promise to share profits in the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago. Trump’s lawyer said that Goldberg was a sophisticated investor who signed a contract saying Trump could cancel the promised profit-sharing plan at any time. Source: news-journal.com.

Veterans who want to become Realtors can sign up for “basic training” with Prudential Georgia Realty, which is offering free pre- and post-licensing training and a waiver of all fees for the first six months. The HomeServices of America brokerage, which has more than 1,000 agents working out of 20 locations in the metro Atlanta area, says the free services offered through the new Veteran’s Real Estate Career program — which include marketing and technology fees, E&O insurance, and local, state and national Realtor association fees — are valued at more than $3,000. Source: prweb.com.

I’ve been brainstorming some fresh ideas for real estate social media campaigns — you know, the ones that aren’t about listings, or real estate, but the ones that residents in your community might find helpful. These are ideas either for a real estate Facebook business page or even your blog.

Having a busy family myself, and with the school year coming to an end, my mind always shifts to the things that we will be doing this summer — or should be doing. So while I was jotting some ideas down, I thought I would share what I’ve come up with so far. You may be able to use them, or they might inspire some fresh new ideas, too. Feel free to add to the list of what has worked for you. Check back for more, too. I’m sure I’ll be adding to the list.

5 fun content ideas for summer your clients will appreciate:

• Publish or link to your city’s Parks and Recreation Summer Activity Guide. Most city websites have a community page where they link to downloadable PDF copies of summer activities, camps and other recreation for the summer. Since most classes have an enrollment, it’s helpful to share this online so your readers can download the info directly from your website and not miss important enrollment deadlines!

• High school reunions: Publish any information on any that might be happening. Alumni prepare a whole year for their high school reunions! If you can give them some notice on when and where they will be happening, you are sure to gain some new fans!

• Video interview a local teacher from a school in your community for some great summer education ideas for kids of all ages — you know, ALL those ideas and fliers you get from teachers when school lets out to make sure our kids’ minds are kept busy during the summer? Why not highlight a teacher in your community and do a fun interview about those ideas, and on how she plans to spend HER summer? What a great way for the kids in the community to get a glimpse of their teacher on camera!

• Stage your home — just for fun! Create a video with your favorite home stager on how to “create the look” of a staged home. Do you work with a home stager from time to time or perhaps with all your listings? Share some of that great secret sauce with your readers and give them some staging tips. Not only will this be a fun project for the summer for some residents, but perhaps it will entice those same people to come to your open houses.

• Link or write a post, or video your local farmers market if you have one. Or perhaps your community has Movies in the Park or any kind of seasonal event that’s fun for the whole community? Let your readers know all about it, and have a photo contest for the best photo from the event.

If you have some more ideas that you’d like to share, I would love to hear them!

Memorialize home sales through photos of buyers and sellers, and shower them with free education. Those were recommendations tweeted multiple times for #madREskillz this week, in what was perhaps its most earnest iteration.

Some nifty technologies also surfaced during the contest, including cutting-edge 3-D video renderings  produced by James Stanley Designs and Vine, an app that allows you to shoot and tweet six-second looping videos.

Oh, and Corcoran revealed that it’s absolutely killing it on Tumblr. We explored that social media platform’s marketing potential in a post earlier this week, by the way.

Scroll through the some of the best entries below, and be sure to vote for the winner on our Facebook page.

Do you like the kitten meme below? 

It sounds like every entrepreneur’s dream: You’re invited to pitch your idea for a real estate tech startup on a nationally televised reality show, to a panel of judges that includes business luminaries like Barbara Corcoran and Mark Cuban.

But then it turns into every entrepreneur’s nightmare. Not only do you not get the $250,000 in seed funding dangled before competitors, but the judges are mostly unimpressed with your idea — or worse.

That’s pretty much how things went for Bill Lyons, founder and CEO of Revestor, when he appeared on the ABC reality show, “Shark Tank.”

As Inman News readers know, Revestor is a real estate search portal aimed at helping homebuyers and investors find good deals by evaluating listings to identify those with the highest potential returns.

According to a summary of the show — which first ran in November, and is scheduled to air again tonight — Barbara Corcoran can’t get behind Revestor because she “doesn’t understand how it’s possible to make estimations on value.”

Mark Cuban “hates this type of business, so he’s out,” and Daymond John “follows his lead.” Robert Herjavec “doesn’t believe Bill has a real business concept, so he’s out.”

Kevin O’Leary “believes Bill is going after real estate investors, which is a smaller subset of all real estate buyers … He’s out, too. Bill will have to find another investor for Revestor.”

While others might have been tempted to throw in the towel after such a public drubbing, Lyons said his faith in Revestor’s model was unshaken.

“We’ll have fun (watching the show again) tomorrow night, ” Lyons said Thursday. “We’ll get beat up again, but it doesn’t matter to us. If we had a (shoddy) product, I would want to jump off a bridge.”

Without “Shark Tank” seed capital to take his company to the next level, Lyons said Revestor relied on “human capital” instead: time, sweat and blood.

The results will be on display today, and in coming weeks, as Revestor relaunches with a new Premium offering that lets users adjust criteria like down payment amount, mortgage rate, property management fee, estimated rents and investment strategy before conducting searches (the free version of the site allows users to adjust those factors one by one on the listing detail page, after conducting a search).

For brokers and agents, an even more intriguing service is in the works: Revestor plans to give members of more than 100 multiple listing services the ability to evaluate Internet data exchange (IDX) listings using the Revestor platform.

In markets where Revestor is able to partner with an MLS,  Lyons said, agents and brokers will be able to enter their client’s criteria into the Revestor platform to find properties that fit their needs as soon as they come on the market. Brokers and agents will also be able to give them direct access to the IDX-powered Revestor platform as a password-protected virtual office website (VOW).

Revestor currently relies on listing syndicator ListHub for listings, and that information can be 24 to 48 hours behind IDX feeds provided by MLSs, Lyons said.

While that’s fine for many consumers, serious investors in hot markets like San Diego and San Francisco want to know as soon as properties with the highest “cap rates” and cash flows come onto the market.

Lyons thinks some of the criticism that “Shark Tank” judges leveled at Revestor was off the mark — the site isn’t really trying to predict what a property will be worth in the future, for example, and he thinks it has the potential to be just as valuable to consumers as investors.

“I’m not saying tomorrow we can be Zillow’s biggest competitor, but we’d like to be up there,” Lyons said. “We want to be a legitimate competitor” for consumer traffic.

He attributed some of the difficulty of explaining what Revestor does to the fact that there was no wireless Internet capability in the television studio where “Shark Tank” was taped. Instead of walking judges through the site on his laptop, he said, he had to use cardboard cutouts of homes for visuals.

But Lyons isn’t at all bitter about the experience. He’s even promoting tonight’s repeat of the “Shark Tank” episode in which Revestor gets raked over the coals.

“We’re just stoked to be on there again,” he said. “There’s no way we could have gotten all this user feedback that’s driven the direction of the site” since the show aired, he said.

Lyons said about 90 percent of people who contact the company “see the potential” of what Revestor is trying to do.

Another 10 percent “think because the Sharks abused us, they can abuse us. They won’t even go to the website.”

What do you think are the most important attributes of a successful real estate tech startup? Leave your comment below.

It’s almost certain that fewer borrowers will qualify for mortgages, and it’s likely that many who do qualify will pay higher interest rates when an “ability-to-repay” rule announced by federal regulators in January takes effect next year as part of implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

That’s according to a 28-page analysis by lawyers with K&L Gates. Even if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau amends the rule to address some industry concerns, “the mortgage banking industry — and consumers — will face a very changed lending environment,” the analysis concludes.

Those most affected include borrowers who do not have stellar credit or whose debt-to-income (DTI) ratios exceed the 43 percent cap for loans entitled to a “safe harbor” from litigation, and mortgage brokers who charge fees of 2 or 3 percent. Loans originated by those brokers will probably not qualify as “qualified mortgages” because they will exceed the 3 percent points and fees maximum.

“Some industry observers seem to consider Chicken Little an optimist — not only is the sky falling, but the earth is trembling and the seas boiling,” the K&L Gates analysis concludes. “But everyone appears to agree that the (proposed rule) has caused the ground to shift beneath our feet.” Source: klgates.com.

Lender Processing Services Inc. may soon be back under the umbrella of title insurer Fidelity National Financial Inc. if reports of a $2.9 billion acquisition pan out.

Fidelity reorganized its title insurance and mortgage loan processing divisions into separate companies in 2006, with FNF’s mortgage loan processing division becoming Fidelity National Information Services Inc. Fidelity National Information Services spun off LPS in 2008.

LPS is in “advanced negotiations” to sell itself to Fidelity National and private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, Bloomberg reports, citing “a person with direct knowledge of the matter.” Source:bloomberg.com.

Social media has changed everything — even the National Association of Realtors. And there isn’t any way for NAR to take it back.

I wasn’t at NAR’s midyear meeting in Washington, D.C., an annual event where the association’s board of directors weighs policy changes recommended by various committees. I was home in Minnesota working with clients during the busiest time of year for real estate sales.

But I was able to get information about what was going on at midyear through social media. Just because I couldn’t be there doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested in what was going on in Washington. The dues I pay to NAR, and my role as a real estate agent, make me just as much of a stakeholder as any NAR committee member.

Not only did I get real-time information this year, but I was able to discuss it with other members from around the country.

NAR employees and volunteers like that social media allows them to communicate with members. But they seem to struggle with the idea that NAR members can also have private and public discussions amongst ourselves — sometimes disagreeing with NAR policy, or even with the way our associations are run.

NAR and the local Realtor associations in my area recognize only one kind of involvement by members, and that is volunteering to be on a committee. Members who merely pay dues are left out of the conversation. But social media is slowly changing that, even though some members and even employees seem to fight it every step of the way.

Discussions among members are sometimes shot down by NAR volunteers and employees. The idea of transparency is new to some NAR leaders, and they almost seem threatened by the idea that general members are starting to speak out.

They don’t seem to recognize that it’s OK to have discussions and arguments, and that they may ultimately strengthen the organization rather than weakening it.

Taking a defensive posture does not engage members. An engaged membership is more likely to take the time to debate issues and to understand them.

Because there are 1 million of us, there are bound to be members who do not agree with what the leadership is doing. It is better to have engaged members who argue than to have apathetic members who do not care.

NAR needs to recognize that because the organization is so large, there will always be members who do not contribute anything but money — and that’s fine because money pays for staff and programs.

But NAR cannot retain members simply by telling us how important NAR is. We need to see the value and understand it. The real estate industry is facing great disruption and change, and nothing is guaranteed or sacred — not even the National Association of Realtors as we know it today.

When members have public discussions, it isn’t at all unusual for those discussions to be disrupted by NAR leaders and employees trying to control the conversation and redirect it in an effort to protect the organization from some real or perceived harm.

We live in a society where asking questions and debating issues is allowed and even encouraged. Transparency in all things should be encouraged. In an era of social media, there really isn’t any way to hide from it, and there certainly isn’t any way to control it.

There are people in the organization who are still in denial and have not embraced the changes society has pushed onto them. An organization cannot just use social media to communicate with members without those members communicating back to the organization.

Change isn’t always easy but social media is changing NAR, and it will never be the same. There are members including myself who had never heard of NAR’s midyear meetings until we started interacting with other members on the Internet. Social media is and has been the disruptor that is changing NAR, and it reaches beyond NAR leadership and into the general membership.

During this year’s midyear meeting, agents from around the country were reading coverage on Inman News and discussing proposed rule changes that could affect our local MLSs. We have opinions because the decision will impact our businesses on a local level. Some of us have informed opinions, even though we did not attend the meetings.

There is more than one way to get NAR members to participate. Using social media is a great way to engage members — or it will be when it becomes more of a conversation. The next step should be to live-stream the midyear meetings onto the NAR member website so we can all hear the debate.

One NAR staffer told me there is nothing to hear! All the more reason to live-stream it.

Being able to see the meetings and listen would help newer members (who may not have the funds to travel to Washington, D.C.) understand the organization and feel like they are part of it.

Objective five in the 2012-2014 strategic plan is to: “Strengthen relationships with Realtors and within the Realtor community.”

The plan specifically mentions both social media and using social media to engage members. There has to be a conversation, and it isn’t always going to be pretty.

It will take some effort on the parts of NAR leadership and employees to be inclusive and tolerant of people who have new or different ideas. Members will disagree and argue and have to learn how to respect differences.

Teresa Boardman is a broker in St. Paul, Minn., and founder of the St. Paul Real Estate blog.

Yes, it’s located on a 50-acre lot in a locale that’s highly desirable to 1 percenters: Greenwich, Conn. And while some might worry that a 13,519-square-foot, 12-bedroom, 9-bath home might come across as slightly ostentatious, the fact that it was built in 1898 could appeal to the nouveau riche. But is any single-family home worth $190 million?

“The thing about ‘vanity pricing’ is … it does provide exposure,” observes the Los Angeles Times’ Lauren Beale. “There’s nothing quite like planting a for-sale sign at the top of the price spectrum to draw notice.”

Beale notes that many homes that are priced in the stratosphere are marketed as pocket listings, never appearing in a multiple listing service. The Greenwich mansion above that may illustrate an example of ‘vanity pricing’ is listed in the MLS — with the highest asking price of any home on realtor.com.

Beale recalls a home in Beverly Hills that was marketed a few years ago at $165 million, but did not sell. Source: latimes.com.

A judge’s ruling that casts doubt on the legality of using Airbnb to rent out apartments in New York for less than 29 days may be the least of the popular website’s worries. Airbnb, which is thought to be headed for an initial public offering this year, may also put users in jeopardy of breaking prohibitions on subleasing that are a common feature of leases all over the world, Quartz’s S. Mitra Kalita points out. Source: qz.com

Developers and architects in Manhattan have found a winning formula for turning even tiny lots into piles of cash: Secure the air rights and build towering, pencil-thin condo towers with incredible views that buyers will pay equally incredible sums for.

There are currently 49 Manhattan condo buildings with units selling for more than $15 million, up from 33 in 2009, the New York Times reports, citing CityRealty. That’s partly due to rising home prices, but another 20 or so high-rise condo buildings are under construction or planned.

Developer Bruce Eichner plans to build a condo tower that will soar nearly 800 feet into the air on a lot south of Madison Square Park that’s just 50 feet wide, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“So long as the zoning in key parts of Manhattan is without height restrictions and developers can assemble the needed air rights from neighboring property owners, the building boom stands to change the New York skyline, sprinkling it with needle-like towers that reach to the skies,” the Wall Street Journal surmises. Source: therealdeal.com.

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Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are ready to call Santa Barbara, Calif., home again, at least on the weekends when they’re not staying at one of their other California homes.

Having made about $4 million in 2008 flipping a mansion in neighboring Montecito for $20 million (Google Chairman Eric Schmidt was the buyer), the couple have reportedly purchased a 10,500-square-foot Tuscan-styled villa on a 13-acre estate in Santa Barbara that was on the market for $26.5 million.

The house sits at the end of a quarter-mile-long driveway and is not visible from the road. DeGeneres and de Rossi also purchased a 3.8-acre property next door, presumably for the additional privacy it will afford. Source: huffingtonpost.com.

Sales of new single-family homes were up a seasonally adjusted 2.3 percent from March to April and 29 percent from a year ago, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

There were an estimated 156,000 new homes on the market at the end of April, which represented 4.1 months of supply at April’s seasonally adjusted annual rate of sales: 454,000 per year. The median sales price of new homes sold in April 2013 was $271,600; the average was $330,800. Source: census.gov.