Depending on what you’re reading about the housing market you’ll either hear that sales or up, or that they’re down. How can it be both? Well, that’s the fun of the various reporting and measurement of the housing market. It’s not one big lump sum which is what most of the general public believes because a house, is a house, is a house – or isn’t it?
Reports have come out from the Census Bureau that show new home sales are down. But, on the other hand you’ve got the National Association of Realtors that released a report stating existing homes sales are up. What is a buyer or seller to do?
If you’re a buyer who wants a brand new home and not a resale then you’ll want to read the report that talks about new home starts and see if there is news to give you an idea if a developers might be willing to provide incentives for a sales such as free upgrades or buyer discounts or points paid to lower interest rates on your loan. In my quick gleaning of the report I narrowed in on the fact that there is over 9 months of inventory on the market which is up from the 6-7 month ranges from most of 2007. This could be a great time to buy a new home especially if some freebies are thrown in.
If you’re a seller, then you’ll want to learn more about what is going on in the resale market. For those of us on the West coast you’ll note that our numbers are actually opposite almost every other regional market and our resale numbers went down 1.1%. Why might that be? My guess would be that the impact comes from the drop in sales for large segments of California. The NW gets lumped in with CA so we have a harder time really separating our data to show what’s going on here in the Puget Sound area. But, if you look at the USA as a whole then the numbers were up – all those other markets helped pull up the national average.
Another thing that showed in the resale report was that we went (nationally) from a 10+ month stock of inventory to in the 9 month range. So while new home sales are slowing, the resale market is picking up some and these two market segments are about neck and neck right now with respect to inventory turning.
One last thing I want to point out is that these resources do a comparison of 2008 to 2007 in terms of volume. Please keep in mind when you read reports that do this that 2007 was one of the highest volume sales years for homes on record…. ever. Actually, I believe 2006 was the best ever and 2007 was almost as high so when everyone wants to make it sound doom and gloom they are forgetting that we have been hitting astronomical numbers. I’d like to see someone put this in better perspective by showing a volume chart that outlines the past 10 years worth of sales.
Anyone got a link for me?
