Housing Market Tracker - Home Sales/Price Review

Here's our summary of articles and data points on the housing market. It's part of Seeking Alpha's coverage of the real estate market and homebuilder stocks. Like all other topics and stock coverage from Seeking Alpha, you can have this sent to your Blackberry or desktop email by signing up for our no-spam free email subscription service.

Quote of the Day

"The best to be said of 2008 will be that 2009 will follow." – Real Estate blogger David Levin's real estate predictions for 2008. (Real Estate Focus, Jan. 6th)

Website of the Day

Many a commentator/analyst/economist has predicted that the housing market will only bottom when sellers finally get real and slash prices to where the market is at. Only then buyers will step up, inventory will move and the housing slump will be over. For a glimpse of how that scenario is playing out in New Jersey, go to the New Jersey Report. This week they feature an informative graph on recent "lowball" transactions-- when buyers made significantly low offers on homes that eventually sold-- versus owners original asking prices.

Real Estate Sales and House Prices

• December Thaw: Home Sales See Strong Month (Tampa Bay Business Journal, Jan. 7th) Florida: "Home Encounter LLC/Tampa MLS: Preliminary home sales numbers for December: Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties were up 14.5% while new listings dropped more than 21% from November... There were 1,824 home sales in the three counties in December, up 14.5% from November's 1,559 sales. At the same time, the average price-per-sf rose 4.2% to $145 despite actual sales prices below listing dropping another 16.4%-6.1% from November... New listings in the three counties fell 21% from 6,080 in November to 5,025 in December. At the same time, listing prices rose 11.1% to an average of $170/sf over November. Total listings declined 6.5% to 37,207 over November."

• Median Home Sale Price Dips Last Month (Puget Sound Business Journal, Jan. 7th) Seattle: "The median sale price for a home in King County fell to $389,500 last month from $399,900 a year earlier, a 2.6% drop. Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS), which tracks home sales in 19 Puget Sound-area counties: The median price... dipped by $1,675 to $313,325 across the area in December 2007 compared with December 2006. The number of closed sales fell to 1,855 in King County last month compared with 2,592 a year earlier and the number of pending sales dropped to 1,488 from 2,251 in 2006."

• Dallas-Fort Worth Home Sales Down 25 Percent (Dallas Morning News, Jan. 7th): "North Texas Real Estate Information System and Texas A&M University: North Texas home sales plunged in December... by 25% compared to December 2006... The median price of homes sold last month dropped 2% from a year ago to $143,190... The number of homes listed for sale... was unchanged from a year ago. That's the first time in months that inventory... hasn't risen. However, the time it takes to sell a house jumped 9% [to] almost 84 days at the end of 2007... Total home sales for 2007 were down 8% from 2006, according to Realtor sales records. But 2007 prices eek[ed] out a 1% gain."

• South Central Pennsylvania Real Estate Market Finishes Strong In 2007 (Central Penn Business Journal, Jan. 7th): "Average home-sale prices in south central Pennsylvania continued to increase in 2007, rising 2.2% from 2006. Central Penn Multi-List Inc.: The average sale price of residential homes rose to $181,977, compared to... $178,048 in 2006. Average home-sale prices also rose in Q4'07, increasing 1.3% to $182,971. The average home-sale price in Q4'06 was $180,622... The number of residential housing units sold in 2007 was 8,637, down from 9,082 in 2006. In Q4'07, 1,676 units sold, compared to 1,862 units sold in Q4'06. Listings stayed on the market an average of 60 days in 2007 [vs.] 50 days in 2006."

• Real Estate Predictions for 2008 (Real Estate Focus, Jan. 6th): "Credit will remain tight, a second wave of readjustments in Adjustable Rate Mortgages will hit the system, foreclosure activity will continue, inventory will continue to build further pressuring prices and Government help won’t... Housing prices will continue to fall because of everything noted above plus... affordability. Housing costs need to reflect the ability of the local wage earners to carry them. So Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance needs to be aligned with local income levels. Since incomes did not keep pace with the housing prices while insurance and taxes increased, prices will be pushed lower to realign with income levels."

• Home Prices Up Slightly In Kane, Kendall (Beacon News, Jan. 6th): "Illinois Association of Realtors: In the Chicago Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area -- defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the counties of Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry and Will -- the median home sale price in November was $247,000, up 0.8% from $245,000 in November 2006... The overall prices of homes crept up slightly, the equalized assessed value of homes in the Fox Valley also went up... In the Chicago Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area, home sales were down 19.6% to 87,624 homes sold January-November 2007, compared to 108,997 homes sold during Jan.-Nov. 2006."

Tracking the Housing Market and Homebuilder Stocks You can track developments in the housing market, homebuilder/housing stocks and review subprime news by bookmarking our Housing coverage or subscribing to our free email service. If you have a blog or website of your own, you can track developments in the sector and provide great content for your readers with our Housing Market widget (left). It's simple to add -- just select "Housing Market" from the drop-down menu here.

Comments

[Jordan Fogal:]

This housing debacle is not going to correct itself and it is having a devestating effect on the US economy. Most republicans still brag on thier torte reform bill that caused so much of this consumer nightmare. Torte reform gave us arbitration clauses... which gave bad builders a place to hide their shoddy workmanship... buy their own mortgage companies and get away with fraud.
So now many hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of us are not sub primes we are victims of big business system that has the American public duped into believing arbitration was for them, not to them. I ask again if arbitration is so wonderful then why is it manditory?

Please google my name for more information on arbitration and its effects on the consumer ...what you do not know will eventually hurt you.

Jordan Fogal

2008 Jan 07 10:33 PM

[Smalltownba...:]

Jordan obviously has a bone to pick with a builder. Torte reform had nothing to do with builders owning their own mortgage companies and the builder owning the mortgage company does not create fraud. Fraud is commited by people with no ethics and the proliferation of fraud resulted from decades of having it ignored by law enforcement.

Irrational exuberance has brought us to where we are. In this Nation we enjoy the freedom to make mistakes. We have what is referred to as personal responsibility. In recent years individuals like Jordan Fogal have abdicated that responsibility to the Federal Government and they are paying the price.

No one was forced to buy a home they could not afford. No one was forced to take out a sub-prime mortgage which would destroy them financially. My father taught me as a youth not to sign anything that I had not read or did not understand. I am so tired of the blame game regarding the foolish actions taken by individuals. The next two years will be ugly in the housing market.

Look on the bright side. When it is all said and done there will be 1/3 fewer Realtors, 1/3 fewer mortgage originators, fewer attorneys practicing Real Estate Law and home prices will be more realistic. It was an enema that the industry badly needed to cleanse the system. All of this will take place regardless of what Congress does or does not do.

2008 Jan 08 11:09 AM

[Matt Blackman:]

There continues to be a lot of optimism out there promoted by the likes of the National Association of Realtors and other industry cheerleaders that the worst of the market is over. Case in point - in the NARs most recent news release on Pending Home Sales, chief economist and head cheerleader Lawrence Yun made the following comments, "“although there could be some minor slippage in the first quarter, existing-home sales should hold in a narrow range before trending up,” he said. The group said it expects existing home sales to increase to 5.7 million in 2008 up from the most recent annual estimate of 5 million homes sold (November 2007).

Just for fun, we looked back at the NAR’s pending home sales report one year ago (Jan 4/07). On a year-over-year basis, November pending home sales had fallen 10.2% from November 2006 but that didn’t stop then chief economist David Lereah from claiming that the narrowing [in November from previous monthly reports] was a significant factor. “Because there is a stronger parallel between changes in the index from a year ago and the actual pace of home sales in coming months, the index is pointing toward fairly stable home sales in the near future,” Lereah said in the January 4, 2007 report. “That is another indicator that home sales likely bottomed-out in September [2006].” (See tinyurl.com/388uku ) Not only was his analysis way off the mark (existing home sales dropped another 20% over the next year), it sounds eerily familiar to that of his successor in the most recent statement. The cruel truth is that property markets around the globe have just come through the biggest bubble in history (see inflation-adjusted home price chart tradesystemguru.com/co... ) and such bubbles have never ended quickly or happily.

2008 Jan 08 04:02 PM