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"Dow tops 9000 as HOME sales RISE for 3rd month" Yahoo! News.


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2009 Jul 23, 2:30am   9,933 views  34 comments

by WillyWanker   ➕follow (0)   💰tip   ignore  

Some positive news for the economy.  I know it's not good news here where it seems most people just want to see the country go down the toilet, even if it takes Obama (and most everyone else) with it.

I'm still waiting to be able to buy an ocean view house in Brentwood or Pacific Palisades for under a million.  My wait may be a long one.  :P  Still, I am encouraged by the positive news.  Unlike others, I want the country to come out of this recession and I would like to see people going back to work.  I don't take pleasure in seeing unemployment numbers  where they are.  Specially here in California.

Read the story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/us_wall_street

#politics

Comments 1 - 34 of 34        Search these comments

1   WillyWanker   2009 Jul 23, 2:57am  

Claremont McKenna College. What hole did you crawl out of?

2   stocksjustgoup   2009 Jul 23, 3:00am  

Homes will always sell, even in depressions and recessions, so I'm not sure how this is news.

One reason sales may be up is because sellers are now getting more realistic with their asking prices.

Remember, every home on the market will sell. EVERY.

3   WillyWanker   2009 Jul 23, 3:07am  

Actually the only homes that will sell are those that someone will buy. Many homes are put up for sale and then de~listed as people change their minds (more than likely because of the economic conditions). Those houses won't sell. The fact that more houses are selling is both a reflection in the fact that sellers have lowered their prices and that buyers are willing to take the step to buy. No matter how people spin it, the news is positive even if it rankles those who feel that no one should be buying anything right now.

4   WillyWanker   2009 Jul 23, 3:13am  

Tenpoundbass says

WillyWanker says

Claremont McKenna College. What hole did you crawl out of?

Crawled out of??? HELL I’m still in it!

Uhm, OK. Well thank you that final piece in the puzzle.

5   WillyWanker   2009 Jul 23, 3:52am  

Some Guy says

Funny how people lose their perspective. All of a sudden, 5.25 is a “high” interest rate, and sales that are off the dismal lows but still lower than average, and mostly foreclosure sales, is a “smokin’ hot market.” The government’s been putting chum in the water, but I wonder if the sharks will keep circling after it’s all eaten.

I don't know about 'smokin hot market' the article did not refer to the market that way. The fact is that sales are up for the 3rd month in a row. If the market were as bad as it was 6 months ago we would continue to have fewer people buying than the moths before, that is not happening right now. For whatever reason SOME people are buying houses because they probably find them priced well enough for them. I don't see a problem with that. Some people actually need to buy a house to raise a family or for whatever reason. If their houses drop in value I would assume that they can ride it out. I think everyone is pretty much aware of the fact that markets go up and DOWN. No one is buying the canard that markets only go up. Anyone who did so was in for a rude awakening.

6   pinnacle   2009 Jul 23, 3:53am  

If the market is so good how come I still find absolutely no properties listed as being for sale in
the local newspaper's "real estate for sale" column and at least 50 default notices published everyday?
Wouldn't realtors be willing to run some ads if they thought buyers were really ready to buy?
Three years ago you would find dozens of houses and condos for sale in the classifieds every day and now they don't even bother to advertise them.
I have never seen even one foreclosure or short sale even mentioned in the newspaper despite the enormous numbers of default notices they have published over the past year. I guess we are not supposed to notice that anything is wrong in the housing market.
I know of several properties that have been put on and off the market multiple times in the past year and a half and are still vacant. Are these "off and on" properties even counted in the so-called "inventory"?
None of this looks like "recovery" to me.

7   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 3:54am  

WillyWanker says

If the market were as bad as it was 6 months ago we would continue to have fewer people buying than the moths before, that is not happening right now.

Let me try to figure out the name of the month 6 months back. December? January?

8   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 3:56am  

WillyWanker says

The fact is that sales are up for the 3rd month in a row.

Right, it looks like exactly same as 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004,2003,2002,2001....so on.

So where is the "positive news"?

9   stocksjustgoup   2009 Jul 23, 3:59am  

pinnacle says

Wouldn’t realtors be willing to run some ads if they thought buyers were really ready to buy?

Three years ago you would find dozens of houses and condos for sale in the classifieds every day and now they don’t even bother to advertise them.

There is no point in advertising when there is the MLS. Buyers find their own houses online, and the agents know it.

10   WillyWanker   2009 Jul 23, 4:03am  

P2D2 says

WillyWanker says

The fact is that sales are up for the 3rd month in a row.

Right, it looks like exactly same as 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004,2003,2002,2001….so on.
So where is the “positive news”?

Sales numbers rose over the past three months. How is that negative? It would be negative if sales numbers continued to decline, but NO they have CLIMBED. That's positive. I know it pains you to read the article but deal with it. It's not the end of the world, although you wish it were.

11   stocksjustgoup   2009 Jul 23, 4:11am  

If a business sells a purse for $100 and makes $40 profit, then that's a baseline.
If they then lower the price to $70, and sell four of them, then they've sold four times as many, but made the same amount of profit.
The only sure conclusion that can be drawn from increased sales is that the item is priced more fairly, whereas before it may not have been.

12   Vicente   2009 Jul 23, 4:11am  

Since I can't include images here let me throw some numbers:

month data
1 100
2 90
3 80
4 70
5 60
6 50
7 52
8 54
9 56

WE'RE SAVED! In months 7,8,9 we are clearly showing a tremendous upswell.

Unless it flattens out and the new normal is below 60, then maybe not.
Or maybe it starts to resume it's drop after a bit. Who knows.

In the stock market there are sayings about dead cats bouncing and
knifecatchers that play such bounces. When y'all can show me that
Joe Six Pack is getting his job back, and these are REAL individual
purchasers and not just refis & investor groups then we'll have
a real recovery. Until then this is a big nothingburger.

13   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 4:15am  

And I love digging older news. This is from 2008

Existing home sales rise on price drop

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said Thursday that the number of existing homes sold during May rose 2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.99 million units in May from a level of 4.89 million in April.

14   d3   2009 Jul 23, 4:18am  

pinnacle says

If the market is so good how come I still find absolutely no properties listed as being for sale in
the local newspaper’s “real estate for sale” column and at least 50 default notices published everyday?
Wouldn’t realtors be willing to run some ads if they thought buyers were really ready to buy?
Three years ago you would find dozens of houses and condos for sale in the classifieds every day and now they don’t even bother to advertise them.
I have never seen even one foreclosure or short sale even mentioned in the newspaper despite the enormous numbers of default notices they have published over the past year. I guess we are not supposed to notice that anything is wrong in the housing market.
I know of several properties that have been put on and off the market multiple times in the past year and a half and are still vacant. Are these “off and on” properties even counted in the so-called “inventory”?
None of this looks like “recovery” to me.

I didnt know people still used the news paper to list properties anymore.

15   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 4:21am  

WillyWanker says

Sales numbers rose over the past three months. How is that negative? It would be negative if sales numbers continued to decline, but NO they have CLIMBED. That’s positive. I know it pains you to read the article but deal with it. It’s not the end of the world, although you wish it were.

I am not having trouble to deal with the article news. I am having trouble to deal with your absurd logic. Not positive does not automatically mean it is negative news. It could be neither positive, nor negative. I am amazed that you are having hard time to understand that home sales ALWAYS go up in April, May, June. Sale going up in June is NO NEWS, unless of course it is a matter of terminology (for "positive news").

16   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 4:29am  

Here some addition information in WSJ

Previously owned home sales, year-over-year, were down 0.2% from the pace in June 2008, Thursday report said.

Ohhhhhh, what a positive news!!!

17   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 4:38am  

drfelle says

he average consumer buying a home isn’t well-informed. They have every swinging-d!@K telling them that “it’s a great time to buy”.

I met one guy in one of the BBQ parties who is planning to buy home because "it’s a great time to buy”. When he heard that I am not planning to buy home in next two/three years, as market is still sliding, he commented "that would be too late, isn't it?" My answer was "well, price are not going anywhere soon". I guess he wasn't convinced with my answer. Not so well-informed people are still thinking that pretty soon home value will start appreciating in 7% or 10% annual rate. If they don't buy now, they will be priced out again. And real estate agents are pretty good to convince them.

18   pinnacle   2009 Jul 23, 7:00am  

California newspapers may not list foreclosures but there are plenty of them in the Las Vegas newspapers
and they are all begging for offers. Maybe that's because Vegas now has 13.5 percent unemployment
and rising.
Again that does not look like any kind of housing recovery to me.
The weekend California papers do list lots of properties for sale but only the more expensive ones requiring
jumbo loans.
They do not publish the default notices on weekends so as not to remind people of the
housing crash while they promote the 2 and 3 million dollar houses.

19   grefra   2009 Jul 23, 9:28am  

And where does this figure in to a recovery??

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32108755

20   indianguy   2009 Jul 23, 9:31am  

I keep hearing so many so called good news about housing recovery. Yesterday, I saw on CBS5 news that housing has recovered in some cities like Lafayette in east bay while others like Concord are languishing. It is no surprise that Concord is in dumps, but I wondered how Lafayetter is any better. Agreed, Lafayetter is a far better neighborhood, but prices have declined everywhere from their highs in 2005-2006.
I paid close attention to what they were saying and found out how real numbers are used to come up with improper conclusions. The story was about how the city governments are suffering due to reduced property taxes. Concord had a lot of new homes built in the last few years, which artificially inflated the city property tax revenues, while Lafayette had little or no new homes built and there were very few sales of older homes. So, Lafayette city did not witness huge percentage increse in its property tax revenue as compared to Concord. Now that there are many foreclosures, Concord is witnessing drastic reduction in its propert tax revenue while Lafayette isn’t.
The house sales in Lafayette right now are actually resluting in incresed property tax revenues because vast majority of them were last sold over ten years ago. One example quoted in the report was of a house which went 50% above its 1999 sale price. This obviously results in increased property tax for the city, but does it imply that house value appreciation in Lafayette is any better than in Concord? Absolutely not! 50% appreciation over ten yrs is roughly about 4% annual return! lousy!!

21   stocksjustgoup   2009 Jul 23, 9:41am  

4% appreciation on a home is fine, as if you simply buy the house to live in it, selling for a profit is a nice bonus.

22   Austinhousingbubble   2009 Jul 23, 10:13am  

What you are seeing is not reluctant well-heeled buyers finally taking the plunge - you are seeing the results of an FHA bubble and an 8K tax incentive - both of which, you and I are on the hook for. I know seven people who bought homes using FHA. There is no credit check for an FHA loan, and you can even obtain one if you are in the midst of bankruptcy.

Also, any first year economics student can tell you that Month over month is not a serious metric; year over year is what you want to go by, and going by that, we are still clearly in free fall.

It's unreasonable to assume that people have some sadistic desire to see their country languish in the toilet - every sane person just want to see a 'real' recovery, with real reform, and real jobs - not a phantom recovery held together with smoke and mirrors.

23   Fireballsocal   2009 Jul 23, 10:38am  

The $8K tax credit is a huge reason why home sales are rising (Though not by much). People want to get in before Nov. 30th so they don't lose out. This doesn't effect investers but your standard first time home buyer is in a hurry. The interest rate has come off its lows and people again want to get in before it goes up higher. The artificially small and getting smaller pool of for sale houses make some un informed people think that the lower priced houses are being bought up and they rush to get in before they lose out.

These are a few of the reasons, along with some good points brought up above, why I think sales are rising. I myself am waiting. I currently plan to wait till after the tax credit expires but may wait much longer than that, depending on what I see the market and interest rates doing.

24   Austinhousingbubble   2009 Jul 23, 11:47am  

Earnings are up due to lower expenses from layoffs.

This is a fact, and a little mentioned one...

25   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 3:44pm  

zetabeos1 says

Its funny that how CAR and NAR issue results to the public to feed off, but unlike publicly traded stock, the numbers

It's really funny how they come up with different metric to demonstrate marked bottomed in different times and different season. When median goes up, that's an indicator that market bottomed. And not long ago, in last winter, the pending home sale was the indicator. Now number of sale.

26   P2D2   2009 Jul 23, 4:54pm  

Interesting article and graphs in Calculated Risk blog about this NAR home sale report.

27   P2D2   2009 Jul 24, 3:36am  

nowhere but up from here says

All I know is I have been watching the the neighborhoods that I own homes in and rent and I see for sale signs go up with sale pending and sold signs right behind.

Since when the sale signs of sale pending signs became the metric of gauging housing market?

28   jl444   2009 Jul 24, 1:04pm  

hey nowhere "where" is your market? Thanks.

29   bob2356   2009 Jul 25, 6:30am  

Housing sales always go up in May, June, and July. Year over year is the only valid metric. There is a bar chart that I can't find comparing 2006-2009 month by month. 2009 is below 2008 every month. 2008 is below 2007 every month. 2007 is below 2008 every month. Housing is not at the bottom yet, there is far too many problem mortgages still out there.

Dow at 9000 really doesn't make sense and I am normally a very bullish person. P/E ratio's are terrible. Almost everyone is making their numbers with layoffs in an economy that is 70+% consumer driven. That's called eating your seed corn.

I'm all for good news, but only if it's real, not NAR or wall street spin.

30   StillLooking   2009 Jul 25, 2:44pm  

The government has the monetary spigots on full blast and further the government is throwing hundreds of billions if not trillions at the housing market.

I am in the Chicagoland area and asking prices are very high. I also looked at housing in the Cleveland area last year in very nice neighborhoods like Shaker Heights. The price differential makes no sense. Cleveland wages are not double Chicagololand wages.

In Cleveland it may make some sense to buy a house. How anybody can even consider buying in Chicago is beyond me. I guess if you can buy a house for 3% down you can control a very large investment for very little money. It is like buying a call option on a house.

So perhaps I am being foolish for not purchasing such a cheap call option if I can just walk away if the investment goes sour?

31   nope   2009 Jul 25, 6:06pm  

Austinhousingbubble says

There is no credit check for an FHA loan, and you can even obtain one if you are in the midst of bankruptcy.

That's a lie. Good luck applying for an FHA loan without having a credit check done. Please show me the lender who's doing this, and I'll show you a lender who will be convicted of mortgage fraud in a few years.

32   homeowner_for ever_san jose   2009 Jul 26, 5:53pm  

Do your math and if it makes sense and you need a home, buy it.
If price/rent is less than historic trend (50+ years) for your area, you are safe to buy if you intend to stay more than 15 years. buy verus rent calculator is pretty useless in most situations because some areas always have mortgage more than rent. you can look at historic ratio of mortgage/rent but not at absolute numbers.just like its always financially better to rent a single bedroom versus 2 bedroom, its always "financially" better to rent versus buy.
Don't expect patrick.net folks to be right in predicting a bottom. Just like optimistists cannot predict top, pessimists cannot predict bottom. I know somebody will shoot back : i am not pessimist, i am realist.
I heard the same phrase from bulls when market was soaring up.In reality, its very very hard to be realist/rational....thats why God made Math to help us.

33   Austinhousingbubble   2009 Jul 27, 6:43am  

That’s a lie. Good luck applying for an FHA loan without having a credit check done. Please show me the lender who’s doing this, and I’ll show you a lender who will be convicted of mortgage fraud in a few years

Luck's got nothing to do with it. Please do your research.

If you had, even a cursory Google search would have yielded a number of articles citing the disproportionate number of crooked loan officials still in the game from the bubble years engaging in all manner of fraud. This really isn't news. The following is from November.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110036448352.htm?chan=rss_topStories_ssi_5
And then there's this:

http://barefootmailmen.blogspot.com/2009/07/fha-mortgages-next-bubble.html

I would prefer if it were a lie. Pathological greed is clearly not dissuaded by the off chance of a conviction -- or house/yacht arrest. There's a fortune to be made.

34   ian807   2009 Jul 27, 8:32am  

People are buying the government's line about the economy. They're feeling confident. Some, hell, *many* are stupid enough to think that the economy is going back to pre-crash levels in our lifetime.

Time, will of course tell. Banks still aren't lending. Unemployment has yet to decline. There's still 200 trillion in aggregate bank exposure to derivatives to amplify the effect of formerly minor downturns, Freddie and Fannie are giant black holes of money and we, as a country are going so solidly into debt that even the hyperinflation that follows the next serious deflationary dip might not save us from defaulting.

Buy hey, it's a GREAT TIME TO BUY!

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