Obama to pitch plan to help home buyers; new figures show housing market upswing

(CBS News) President Obama is getting ready to pitch his plan to help home buyers as new figures show the housing market is getting stronger.

A survey by the property information firm CoreLogic finds home prices in June were nearly 12 percent higher compared to the same time last year. The biggest increases were found in Nevada, California, Wyoming, and Arizona.

Obama to propose eliminating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac

But the real estate market, as CBS News' Chief White House correspondent Major Garrett pointed out on "CBS This Morning," isn't always driven by individual home buyers, but rather big, institutional investors that are buying up lots of cheap properties to either rent or sell them.

Garrett said, "The president is going to try to address all that. Now it's worth remembering that during the Great Recession, American homeowners lost trillions of dollars in equity due to falling or collapsing home prices, having their mortgages become underwater. The president addressed that early on and now he's trying to give a more complicated, subtle message about how to intervene in the housing market."

The president wants to ask Congress to provide $3,000 a year in mortgage relief for those first-time buyers to get into the market, reduce red tape in the mortgage application process and also diminish the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the government-backed mortgage lenders that tended to dominate the real estate market before it collapsed.

Garrett said, "Some of these ideas have been ignored in Congress before, but this renewed push, particularly on limiting the role of Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac does have bipartisan support and later on this fall may in fact cross the finish line."

To watch Garrett's full report, watch the video above.