Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Fall In Existing Home Sales Expected: Survey

Bloomberg has this report before the NAR release is out. "Sales of previously owned homes fell in December for a third straight month, evidence that housing demand was starting to falter at the end of a record year, economists said before a private report today." "Sales of existing homes fell to a 6.87 million annual pace last month, the slowest since March, from 6.97 million in November, according to the median of 59 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. Sales haven't fallen for three straight months since 2002. They are down from a record 7.35 million rate in June." "'For existing home sales, we may have passed the peak in 2005,' said (economist) Mike Englund. 'The story line for 2006 is going to be a slowdown, primarily in those geographic areas that have seen big gains.'" "The National Association of Realtors is scheduled to release its report at 10 a.m. in Washington. Forecasts range from 6.75 million to 7 million." "Applications to purchase homes dropped 21 percent by the end of December from a 12-month high in June, while filings for refinancing fell 54 percent from their yearly high, also in June, according to figures from the Mortgage Bankers Association. 'Rising home prices, higher mortgage rates and declining affordability are starting to affect housing demand,' said Peter Kretzmer, a senior economist at Banc of America. 'Evidence continues to mount that the housing market is cooling off.'" "Home resales, which account for about 85 percent of the residential real estate market, are tabulated at contract closings and reflect buying decisions made a month or two earlier. Purchases of new homes are counted when a contract is signed, making them a better gauge of current conditions, economists said." "The Commerce Department will report new-home sales figures for December on Jan. 27. Sales may have fallen to a 1.225 million annual rate last month, the lowest since January 2005, from 1.245 million in November, based on the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists."
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2 comments:

  1. Ben Jones1/25/2006 05:55:00 AM

    This note from Blogger:

    'Tuesday, January 24, 2006

    'We'll be taking Blogger down on Wednesday the 25th at 4pm PST to fix a bit of a switch that's gone wonky on us. The outage should last about 15 minutes. Blogger.com and Blog*Spot blogs will be inaccessible during this time.'

    'This repair will fix the problem that caused the brief outage last Friday night. We're also using this down time as an opportunity to tune our databases for more efficient spam catching and deletion.'

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  2. txchic571/25/2006 06:53:00 AM

    Let me ask a question of the group:

    I am renting a house I like pretty well. The rent's a little high for what it is but I'm willing to pay it. I've been here almost 3 years.

    The guy who owns this place lives out of state (he's a mortgage broker in Fla, lol) He has told me he wants to put the place up for sale in April. I don't want to buy it but I am lazy and would prefer to continue to rent it rather than move. If we do have to move though, it's going to be out of state (N. AZ)

    There have been 3 houses across the street listed already. My owner is going to have a hard time selling this place because it needs some work done and he thinks it's worth a lot more than it is in this market.

    Ya'll help me come up with the argument to convince this joker to take the money (what I'm paying him) and sit.

    I think he's cash flowing on what I pay him. If he isn't, I have no idea why. He's owned this place for nearly 20 years.

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