29
2008
Housing Market – Have We Reached Bottom?
From our ABCNews Blog:
Last week’s report on existing home sales by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), revealing a 2.6 percent decline from May, added to the pile of sobering news about the housing market and the economy. Here at Hitwise, we have found, in the past, that Internet activity around home purchase decisions — specifically, searches for “homes for sale” — provides valuable insight into what the future may hold for real estate.
While year-over-year we see a decline in “homes for sale” searches that match existing home sales reports, the last several weeks appear to show a leveling-off in real estate search activity. While home sales declined, the same NAR report indicated that average home prices have dropped 6.7 percent from the previous year. Search data could be indicating that market forces (buyers coming into the market to take advantage of lowering prices) are keeping near-future home sales from continuing their slide.
Folks when houses can be picked up for less then the cost of building. How much further do you really think they will drop. The Foreclosures being sold by the banks (who sell below the advertisied price by offering repair and cl;osing incentives) are clearly at bottom. The home owners who are in deial and waiting for a rebound will still see a drop. Thus the bottom is here at least for foreclosures. The others will have to drop their price to meet the competition from foreclosure or inevitably be foreclosed if they don’t have the funds to wait out 6mths to 12mths.
Next Spring housing market will prove this.
Cheers
I think it is a good sign to see that the searches are starting to level off. It would be interesting to see the searches per region and/or state. They probably vary in a big way from state to state as some states are doing pretty good right now.
Thanks for this insight.
Peter