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How low can you go?
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The National Assocation of Realtors (NAR) reported sharply lower home sales and prices today as inventory continues higher and higher - the chart below says it all.
Not surprisingly, the Realtors' trade group painted a rosier picture than the statistics clearly indicate. With home prices now falling markedly even in the NAR data - down 5.1 percent from year-ago levels - the title of the news release indicated "mixed results" as a result of plunging condo sales and stable existing home sales in October.
Wouldn't "mixed results" be if one went up and the other went down? Maybe next month it will be "one went down a little" and the other "went down a lot", so, again, let's call the results "mixed".
Compounding the misdirection, the press release contains this gem:NAR President Richard Gaylord, a broker with RE/MAX Real Estate Specialists in Long Beach, Calif., emphasized that all real estate is local. “Keep in mind that home prices are up in 93 out of 150 metro areas, and there is a lot of confusion in the market from reports about national data. Broadly speaking, home prices in most areas are up modestly or fairly stable,” he said. “Areas with population or job growth are seeing the strongest home price gains.”
Gee, now's probably a good time to buy a house.
5 comments:
"... there is a lot of confusion in the markets ..."
no doubt Mr Gaylord is trying to generate a lot of confusion about the current state of the housing market. ...
what a bunch of liars. i can't wait for the annihilation of the RE Agent profession.
Let's see here...D.C. has job growth due to the federal government and defense contractors, BUT D.C. REAL ESTATE IS DOWN!!!
Explain that you effing real estate idiot!
Oh, it will go lower. Much lower....
I took a look at the data in the study cited where "home prices are up in 93 out of 150 metro areas" - it's basically three month old data (closings from July-Aug-Sep) that really doesn't contain much (if any) of the fall-out from the credit crunch that began in August.
For example, it shows prices rising 1.1 percent from year ago levels in Los Angeles when the latest info from DataQuick (for October) says prices are down four percent and the Case-Shiller index has prices down seven percent.
Am I right in saying that there are houses going for $10k in Detroit? If so, I predict that it will become the call-centre capital of the world in 5 years time.
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