New homes sales fell to a record low in January, extending a two-month slide; pending and existing home sales were down in December; homebuilder sentiment in January fell back to where it was last June, and mortgage applications have fallen three of the past four weeks,
Existing-Home Sales Plunge In January:
“The data is telling us that it is weaker than we’ve been anticipating,” says Pat Newport, a housing analyst at IHS Global Insight. “What the housing market has needed all along is a better economy.”
As I’ve been saying, this “recovery” is nothing but a fake. The only reason that there has been any improvement in housing or autos or banking or anything else is that the government is propping it up with stimulus. The real demand is almost non-existent. Furthermore, the government has just extended unemployment benefits AGAIN (now almost 2 years) and there is little incentive for people to look for work. When you’re paying people to stay home - THEY AREN’T GOING TO WORK! This is another government program which is actually causing the economy to worsen. Hungry people look for work. People with unending unemployment sit on their butts!
Smith says the government's mortgage modification program meant to avert foreclosures "is doing nothing more than prolonging the housing recovery. It is doing more harm than good."
EXACTLY!
Some 4.5 million homes are expected to fall to foreclosure this year, following 2.8 million in 2009. In contrast, existing homes sales for the two-year period will average about 5.5 million.
If things are getting better, why are there 2 MILLION more foreclosures this year than in 2009. That doesn’t sound like improvement to me.
That's the Federal Reserve's massive $1.42 billion dollar program to buy mortgage backed securities, MBS, and government agency debt.
Yep, $1.42 billion would be a massive program (a billion is a lot of money), however, IT’S A $1.42 TRILLION dollar program and yes - that IS MASSIVE!
Who’s going to pay for all this reckless spending?
There’s nothing FAKE about the $250,000 PLUS I’ve put in my bank account in the last 4 months!!!
WOW…What a NEWS FLASH…There’s a shaky housing recovery AFTER the worst housing BUST in HISTORY!!!
OH MY GOD…I can’t believe it…You mean to tell me that the HOUSING RECOVERY won’t bring things back to 2006 LEVELS???
I thought I could just go out and BUY ANYTHING and MAKE MONEY???
This is a HUGE dissapointment.
I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do…I’m NOT BUYING another property…THAT’S IT…I’m done…Even though I’ve made a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS…That ARTICLE got me thinking!!!
I’m throwing out EVERYTHING I KNOW about REAL ESTATE and INVESTING CYCLES and I’m just listening to NEWS WEB SITES from now on!!!
“Foreclosed homes are selling at remarkable pace,” says Richard Smith, CEO of Realogy, the national real estate company, whose brands include Coldwell Banker, Century 21 and The Corcoran Group. "People are looking for the value play. The majority of homes are being bought by investors and first-time buyers…
[i]The market’s range for that increase is somewhat large–between a fifth of a percentage point and a full percentage point. A consensus, however, seems to have formed around half a percentage point. At the worst then, 30-year mortgage rates would be around 6 percent, which is still historically low and thus presumably attractive to borrowers.
“It will have a negative impact, but not a great negative impact,” says Jed Smith, an economist with the National Association of Realtors. “I don’t think it will kill the housing market recovery.”[/i]
“The credit markets are still dysfunctional, the banking system is still in distress,” says Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight. “There’s no new credit flowing. The Fed is obviously getting too impatient about tightening credit.”