Existing Home Sales Down 19.3%
As we noted earlier: As expected, year-over-year sales and prices continue to get punished. The monthly year-over-year existing home sales fell 19.3%, while the national median existing-home price was $200,700, down 7.7% from March 2007. Total housing inventory rose 1.0%, a 9.9-month supply.
February to March sales numbers were down 2.0% (seasonally adjusted) to an annual rate of 4.93 million units -- far worse than we expected in our earlier discussion on seasonality. Note that the non-seasonally adjusted monthly data actually rose, to 374,000 sales.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR, was much more circumspect than usual. He noted that buyers face more restrictive lending practices, and that potential buyers remain on the sidelines. Surprisingly, Yun also was cautious about additional Fed cuts, saying: "With elevated inflation, the Federal Reserve should be extra careful about further rate cuts."
I have one picayune disagreement with their data release: "Because the slowdown in sales from a year ago is greater in high-cost areas, there is a downward pull to the national median with relatively higher sales activity in low-cost markets."
We simply do not see that in the data. If the NAR were to break down sales in $100k increments (>$100k, $100-200, etc.) we would be able to track what sections of the housing market were doing better or worse.
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Existing Home Sales, NonSeasonally Adjusted
Chart courtesy of Calculated Risk
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Source:
Existing-Home Sales Slip in March
NAR, April 22, 2008
http://www.realtor.org/press_room/news_releases/2008/existing_home_sales_slip_in_march.html
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 | 10:30 AM | Permalink
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One wonders...how many of those 'sales' were REO takebacks?
As long as a REO transaction is conducted through a realtor, then it counts in the NAR 'sales' data.
Which means we are not actually comparing apples to apples. In '05, '06 and most of '07 REO/Realtor transactions were negligible.
Now? Could be 10%-15% of the total?
I sure wish they'd break that out...
Posted by: Chris Martenson | Apr 22, 2008 11:13:10 AM
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