News on Home Sales Worse Than Expected
The results are in and it’s official: 2006 was indeed a sucky year for the national housing market. According to the National Association of Realtors, existing homes sales fell 8.4 percent last year, the worst annual drop since 1989. The decreasing number of transactions, though, was somewhat mitigated by the fact that prices managed to…
The results are in and it’s official: 2006 was indeed a sucky year for the national housing market. According to the National Association of Realtors, existing homes sales fell 8.4 percent last year, the worst annual drop since 1989. The decreasing number of transactions, though, was somewhat mitigated by the fact that prices managed to hold up, with the median price of an existing home edging up about 1 percent. And we can put all our worries aside: David “No Conflict Here” Lereah says that the worst is behind us. “With fingers and toes crossed, it appears that we have hit bottom in the existing home market,” he said.
Existing Home Sales Plummet in 2006 [Yahoo]
It’s articles like this that do your readers, whom I suspect are buyers interested in brownstone Brooklyn properties, a total injustice. This market is nothing like the vast and totally different markets around the rest of the country. The article above looks to be describing an overall type picture of the entire country. Also – stuff like this just serves to make people who want to buy something much more angry and anxious when they get to the open houses here and see that they cannot possibly expect to buy anything with an attitude of “I’ll wait another 2 years until the prices drop”. Wake up everyone – has the market in NY or Brooklyn dropped in the last 2 years? No – and it doesn’t look likely to happen in the next 2 either. I suggest that you all take a course in Economics and revisit the law of supply & demand. That is what drives this market – not what is going on in the rest of the country.
“I would expect any new sellers coming into the market this spring to be a bit more realistic in their expectations.”
Don’t count on it?
“Here here. Let the brokers start exiting the system”
You are evil.
On the Forum last week, one poster was fretting over a broker’s handling of multiple bid situation. I don’t see many bargain brownstones out there….
Here here. Let the brokers start exiting the system
“So 2006 was 3rd highest year for sales and we are calling it terrible slump. Are we perhaps not keeping things in perspective?”
Well, also keep in perspective that the population has increased…so necessarily, wouldn’t you expect even normal numbers of home sales to be higher as the years go on?
It may not be a slump per se, but it’s certainly a huge drop in sales activity, and if that continues, which it likely will (after all, who’s really left to buy?), that means lost commissions, and lost jobs, for folks in the industry. You may not be affected, but many brokers who are will think differently.
existing home sale 1999 – 5,210K
2000 – 5,119K
2001 – 5,250K
2002 – 5,940K
2003 – 6,100K
2004 – 6,675K
2005 – 7,080K
2006 – 6,480K
So 2006 was 3rd highest year for sales and we are calling it terrible slump. Are we perhaps not keeping things in perspective?
This should be an interesting year for real estate. I would expect any new sellers coming into the market this spring to be a bit more realistic in their expectations.
Kevin,
Did prices manage to hold up from ’89 to ’95?
http://www.youdovoodoo.com/80sbubble.htm
Let the prices bottom out. I want to buy an apt.
http://www.forgotten-ny.com