Biggest drop in 18years. March existing home sales #'s down 8.4%, much worse than the expectation of -4.3%. Also notable is declines by region:
Northeast -8.2%
Midwest -10.9%
South -6.2%
West -9.1%
More important than ever to buy at a biiiig discount.
We’re starting to make a little progress. Now, we’ve just got to see the prices start to really fall and we’ll know the decline has begun.
Did anyone happen to catch the number of months of inventory?
Mike
No, but I’ll take a wild stab and say nationally 2-3 times what it was 6-8 months ago.
This is great news for Real Estate Investors. We can use this as a motivational tool to bring those prices down a little more than we are use to. :bobble Of course this is not good news for the RE Agent, their jobs are not going to be easy.
Any links to articles anywhere?
“The Realtors’ report said that with sales faling, the amount of time it would take to exhaust the existing inventory of unsold homes at the March sales pace rose to 7.3 months, 30 percent longer than a year ago.”
Thanks Paul!
7.3 Months. Wow!
I believe that the housing market here in my little corner of Ohio is beginning to collapse. It has been poor for many months, but the sellers have been holding to their prices hoping someone would buy them. I’m starting to see prices drop sharply as sellers (especially discouraged landlords) are throwing in the towel.
Mike
From what I can tell we were in the same postition in my market about 1 year ago, now I am thinking things have bottomed out, even if they havent and prices drop another 10% thats only like 5k for most of the homes that I am buying, Just yesterday I picked up a side by side 2 unit with a 3 stall garage that will appraise at roughly 85k and went into foreclosure at 94k, I am paying 36k, not bad, I plan to sell it for 75k, after 7k in repairs, or if it does not sell I will put tenants in at $650 a side, so either way im happy
I think it’s the ARM adjustments that’ll be the final straw. Most people in a 30-year fixed don’t need to sell. They can just ride it out. All of the ARM’s are going to make a good percentage of people have to sell. That’ll keep inventory high. It’s not like people can just pull their home off the market and wait for things to turn around to sell. They can’t afford their payment and they have to sell now.
Here in Miami huge at least 30-50 huge condo buildings on the beach are still being built which means our market is going to keep declining for awhile.
Don’t forget the Dow hitting 13,000.
I’ve said it before here, we haven’t even seen the beginning of this.
The Democrats will take the White house because Bush is unable to compromise on ANYTHING. Then they will tighten lending standards by LAW and that is a recipe for bad stuff ahead.
If you can find the PBS documentary on the 1929 crash/depression watch it.
If you sleep that night let me know. The similarities are UNBELIEVABLE!
Huge real estate BOOM, followed by Huge stock market run up with the initial break coming in March of 1929 ( sort of like the 400 point break we just had). The dow rallies right back to new highs and we all know what happens in October. By the way, did you know the majority of bank failures in 1930 were caused by bad real estate loans. Now where did I just read about that…
I won’t happen the same way or to that extent. (and who am I, people a lot smarter than me out there) But check it out, that documentary is SCARY STUFF>
CNBC had a 30 second interview at the Rainbow room with THE top trader in the U.S. for 2006. (can’t remember the name) His quote “When this thing goes, and we’re close, it’s going to be worse than anyone expected”
Oh well, plenty of people got or stayed rich during the depression…I’m determined to be one of them.
Your right Rich!
Jesse Livermore made more money the day of the crash than he had ever made previously.
I’m not doom and glooming here, just found it very interesting.
I’ve always planned for the worst, and hoped for the best.
See my other post for the tie in.