Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
Moody’s Economy.com Chief Economist Mark Zandi is coming out with a new study on the housing market. He’ll discuss it in a conference call with clients on Feb. 5.
Moody’s offered a sneak peak. Among the conclusions:
· Home prices will stabilize by the second half of this year.
· The national Case-Shiller home price index will decline by another 12% from the third quarter of last year for a total peak-to-trough decline of 30%.
· By the end of this unprecedented downturn, house prices will have declined by double digits peak to trough in nearly 62% of the nation’s 381 metro areas. In about 10% of metro areas, price declines will exceed 30%.
Read more »
Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
Sales of existing single-family homes jumped an unexpected 7% in December from November’s seasonally adjusted annual rate, the National Association of Realtors said Jan. 26.
And the inventory of unsold homes at the end of December dropped 11.7 percent to a 9.3 month supply at the current sales pace.
The increase in sales is coming as both home prices and interest rates fall to affordable levels. The national median existing home was $175,000 in December, 15.3% lower than it was in December 2007, the Realtors said.
Bank-owned foreclosures in California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and other speculative markets are largely behind the sales increases. Prices in those states have been falling fast but unemployment is spiking.
About 60.6% of homes for sale in the Las Vegas metro area during the third quarter of last year were affordable for people earning the area’s median income, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index. A year earlier, just 18% of the homes for sale were affordable.
Expect the affordability to be much greater when the next opportunity index report is released because interest rates have fallen dramatically since November.
Read more »
Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
Not even high-flying New York City escaped the debilitating grip of the credit crunch and the souring economy last year, and the numbers in a newly released fourth quarter 2008 Manhattan market report by Cushman & Wakefield Inc. tell the story.
Read more »
Continue Reading January 26th, 2009
Not even high-flying New York City escaped the debilitating grip of the credit crunch and the souring economy last year, and the numbers in a newly released fourth quarter 2008 Manhattan market report by Cushman & Wakefield Inc. tell the story.
Read more »