Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Existing Home Sales Report: January 2007

Today, the National Association of Realtors released its monthly “Existing Home Sales” report for January along with some guarded optimism.

As David Lereah puts it:

“Although we’re expecting existing-home sales to gradually rise this year, and buyers are responding to the price correction, some unusually warm weather helped boost sales in January”

“We shouldn’t be surprised to see a near-term sales dip, but that will be followed by a continuing recovery in home sales.”

Looking at the data it does appear that sales in the Northeast have been fairly strong with some solid increases on a year-over-year basis to both single family homes and condos but given that this winter season has been exceptionally mild, that result is not very surprising.

Another key factor in the Northeast regions up-tick in sales seems to be some significant downward price movement.

In fact, for single family homes, prices have declined year-over-year in every region especially the West.

It will be interesting to see if the mild weather continues to help prop up sales or if it will provide even more time for inventory to swell thus providing a more competitive marketplace.

Below is a chart consolidating all the year-over-year changes reported by NAR in their January 2007 report.

Particularly notable are the following:

  • Single family home prices were down in ever region.
  • Excluding the Northeast region, sales of both single family and condos were down in every region.
  • Inventory and Months Supply show double digit increases on a year-over-year basis.


Posted by at