27th May 2008, 04:50 pm
Home sales are up in some of the metropolitan areas that have been hardest hit by the real estate and housing slump. The home sales aren’t typical sales however, they’re home sales that are being driven by lenders that are slashing prices on foreclosed properties.
All in all, home sales continue to stay weak as home sales of previously-occupied homes were down by 18% over last years already down numbers but the recent data regarding sales of foreclosed homes is a good sign for the housing and real estate market.
Sales are up in the areas that have been hardest by foreclosures and falling real estate prices…
Areas such as Las Vegas, Nevada, Sacramento, California and Detroit, Michigan are leading the way in foreclosed home sales.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the inventory of foreclosed homes held by lenders is hovering around half a million!
Many lenders have been holding on to their foreclosed properties to avoid slashing prices and to avoid huge losses but apparently the tide is turning somewhat as more and more lenders are unloading foreclosed properties at dirt-cheap prices
21st May 2008, 07:26 pm
The National Association of Realtors released a statement saying that median home prices were down in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas during the first 3 months of this calendar year…
On a national level the median price of an existing single family home for the first 3 months of the year was $196,300 according to the report.
To give you a frame of reference, the median price of an existing single family home for the first 3 months of last year was $212,600…
This report comes out a little late however as there does appear to be signs of the real estate market bottoming out recently…
Maybe not so much that the real estate market is bottoming out but more like correcting itself afters years of inflated home values.
8th May 2008, 08:39 pm
The total number of homes for sale was down in some warm cities located in the Southwest and recent data is now showing that the number of unsold houses is no longer growing at a break-neck pace…
Cities such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Sacramento actually had fewer homes for sale available in April then they did in March so certain parts of the country may be starting to show signs of bottoming out and hopefully beginning to rebound soon.
Prices on homes continue to go down and the prices on some foreclosed homes are starting to attract buyers it seems.
The trend for most large, metropolitan areas however is the opposite unfortunately as cities such as Washigton, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco had a larger inventory of homes for sale in April then they did in March.