More Mixed Home Price/Sales Data [Housing Tracker]

Quote Of The Day 

“People are looking for a reason to get off the fence. The most asked question in America today other than who Obama’s Vice President is going to be is probably when is the bottom? And if you even smell as though you are in real estate, people ask you that question all day long.” – Robert Il Toll, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Toll Brothers homebuilder. (Toll Brothers F3Q08 Outlook Conference Call Transcript in Seeking Alpha, Aug. 13)

House Sales/Price Data

U.S. Home Sales Fall to 10-Year Low as Prices Tumble. “National Association of Realtors: Existing U.S. home sales fell to a 10-year low in Q2 and the median price for a single-family house dropped 7.5%... to $206,500 from $223,500 a year earlier. Sales of single-family houses and condominiums fell 16% to 4.913 million at an annualized pace... RealtyTrac: A third of all sales in the quarter were foreclosures or “short sales.” Sacramento, California [fell] 36%... Metropolitan Cape Coral and Ft. Myers, Florida, [declined] 33%. Riverside and San Bernardino, California, tumbled 32.7%, and Los Angeles dropped 30%... The metropolitan New York area… fell 5.3%, and Boston dropped 11%.” (Bloomberg, Aug. 14)

Metro Home Sales Improve. RealComp MLS: Metro Detroit's… sales [were] up and foreclosures down… In the four-county region of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Livingston, 4,245 homes were sold in July, a 20% gain over the 3,538 sold in July 2007… The number of pending home sales… was up as well, to 5,971, a 34.1% increase from last July. It was the seventh month in a row that Metro Detroit home sales were up year over year. All told, year-to-date sales in Metro Detroit are up 13.38% over the January-July period of last year.” (Detroit News, Aug. 14)

Home Sales: Good News Peeks Out From the Gloom. “Orlando Regional Realtor Association: 1,436 homes, condominiums and town homes changed hands last month, second only to the 1,489 properties that sold in June. Summertime sales typically peak in June, so it was no surprise that the July total was down more than 3 percent from the month before. And in another sign the local market may be stabilizing, July was off from the same month last year by less than 6% -- the second month in a row that the market's year-over-year decline was less than 10%... The number of homes in the core Orlando market… under contract for sale in July -- 3,258 -- was up 26.7% from a year ago.” (Orlando Sentinel via Big Builder Online, Aug. 13)

Centex To Close Colorado Operations. “Metrolist Inc., metro Denver’s Multiple Listing Service: Colorado’s housing market has been soft in recent years, as has the rest of the country’s, and remains challenged, but there have been signs of improvement. Resales of single-family homes in the Denver area increased 6.54% to 4,154 in July from the July 2007. Median resale price last month was $229,200, down 10% from July 2007.” (Dallas Business Journal, Aug. 12)

 

Seeking Alpha's Housing Tracker is a collection of housing-related excerpts from various sources, grouped by topic. Feel free to post any interesting links on the subject in the comments section below.

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Comments

[ReEconomist:]

In addition to more restrictive financing, the issue for a lot of potential buyers now is confidence. Who wants to buy a house that falls in value? I want to pass along a home pricing tool that provides some insights to future home prices by indicating the top level and bottom level of prices for a particular property.

The top or price Ceiling is the highest prices can be limited by the income levels of the zip-code. The bottom, or Floor is the lowest prices can be based on their ability to generate a yield from rental income.

The shorter the spread from Ceiling to Floor the less risk of price declines. The greater the spread from Ceiling to the Floor the more risk to prices. You can check out the Ceiling and Floor for your area at
ushousingmeltdown.org/...

Market prices tend to move up and down between the Ceiling and the Floor. Are your local prices trending upward toward the Ceiling or downwards toward the Floor?

2008 Aug 15 01:27 PM