Looking for the Bottom
Ever since the real estate bubble burst and market indicators across the board started plummeting, everyone has wanted to know when the market was going to reach bottom. Well, maybe we’re there, nationally speaking. Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, thinks so; he told AP via Fox News that “the freefall…
Ever since the real estate bubble burst and market indicators across the board started plummeting, everyone has wanted to know when the market was going to reach bottom. Well, maybe we’re there, nationally speaking. Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, thinks so; he told AP via Fox News that “the freefall is over.” AP cited several nationwide statistics from the past two weeks: “home resales in June are up 9 percent from January, on a seasonally adjusted basis; sales of new homes have climbed 17 percent during the same period; and construction, while still anemic, has risen almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year.” In the Northeast, “home resales in June hit a seasonally adjusted pace of 820,000, up 28 percent from the beginning of the year. Sales of new homes were also up slightly and construction in the region more than doubled.” It is the amateur statistician, however, that reads too deeply in short-term statistics. The improvements in the market, so far, can only provide hope that the worst is behind us, but economists warn that even if this is the bottom of the barrel, we may stay down there for a while longer.
Welcome to the Bottom [Fox News]
Photo by AvarieRiot
“Last Week’s Biggest Sales^^^^^^^”
Where did the average price in each set peak? Where are we from the peak?
***Bid half off peak comps***
Last Week’s Biggest Sales^^^^^^^
LOL…what are the historical norms for housing prices??? That’s just crazy talk.
Are they 1950s, 1960s, 1995, 2003 prices??? Do you actually believe that???
“Where are BHO, cornerbodega & Miss Muffett to refute this evidence??????”
Way up here where there’s oxygen, DIBS!
“Maybe they are still trying to understand what a second derivative is.”
That would be the rolling NY Case-Shiller YOY (month-to-month change which is a rate of change, aka second derivative) which absolutely will not and cannot spell bottom until it gets out of the red and into the green (change sign). It’s still deep in bloodshot red. Understood.
BTW, which bottom are we talking about? That in number of sales or that in sale prices? A bottom in number of sales is the prerequisite for capitulation (a race to the bottom – last one to sell is a rotten egg!). You can’t have price declines if nothing sells. One by one, sellers are realizing that it’s no longer about squeezing out a profit or breaking even. It’s about minimizing loss (I-beam depth) or simply doing what Morris Day told you to do in the 80’s.
I will digest the data (from NAR of all people) and comment later.
(Is this all Team Bull has? My intelligence is insulted!)
***Bid half off peak comps***
housing prices are predictable as they always revert to historical norms. Comparing housing prices with with stocks, commodities, weather, etc is misleading. What is uncertain is the size of the bubbles and the time it takes for the correction.
> I love how all of Team bear know such things with such certainty.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
martis, if you could really predict things with such certainty you wouldn’t be trolling on brownstoner. Please, give us your stock picks too.
Not all the time, ditto.
dibs – basic economics my friend. there will be no V shaped recovery … wishful thinking. you don’t just shake off the largest economic disaster since the Great Depression in a year or two or three. bloated NYC housing prices will not recover faster than the local economy which will remain F’d for a long time.