The beers are on ice so I’ll keep it short today.
Blah, blah, blah,…..housing is a mess. Blah, blah, blah…Lawrence Yun is clown.
How’s that?
Here, by the way, is the latest news in housing and its not so good.
From AP by Martin Crutsinger entitled: Sales of existing homes fall 1 percent in April
“Sales of existing homes fell for the eighth time in the past nine months, with the backlog of unsold single-family homes rising to the highest level in more than two decades.
The National Association of Realtors said that existing home sales dropped by 1 percent to 4.89 million units, matching the all-time low set in January. These records go back to 1999.
The median price for an existing home dropped 8 percent, compared with a year ago, to $202,300. Analysts predicted further price declines given the huge backlog of unsold single-family homes, which rose in April to 10.7 months supply at the current sales pace, the highest inventory level since June 1985.
Even with the weak results for April, Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, said he saw reasons for optimism for the second half of this year as more types of mortgages become available as industry and the government respond to a severe credit crunch that began last August.
“I would encourage buyers who were disappointed by poor mortgage options to take another look at the market because the lending changes are significant,” he said.
However, other economists were not as optimistic about a rebound in sales, contending that the continued drop in prices was keeping potential buyers sitting on the fence, waiting for prices to fall further.
“With prices collapsing, the incentive not to buy a home is increasing by the week, and with inventory showing no sign of improvement, prices will keep falling,” predicted Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.”
So that’s it for today, more bad housing news. I’m now on a 72 hour break.
I’m grabbing a brew, a lacrosse game or two and some sunshine.
Have a wonderful and well deserved holiday everyone!
