Paper Economy - A US Real Estate Bubble Blog

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Pending Home Sales: February 2007

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Pending Home Sales Report for February 2007 showing continued year-over-year declines in every region.

Additionally, the Northeast has fallen back below 100 indicating that February’s home sales activity was BELOW the average activity recorded in 2001, the first year Pending Home Sales were tracked.

According to David Lereah, Chief Economist of NAR, the declines are as a result of bad weather and sub-prime slime:

“If it wasn’t for the unusually bad weather in February, we’d be seeing a better performance in pending home sales, … We also may be seeing some fallout from a decline in subprime lending, but a slight improvement in the more volatile month-to-month index is encouraging – the data suggests an underlying stabilization is taking place in the housing market, but it will take another month or two to clarify. Problems in the subprime mortgage market will become more apparent over time, and they will modestly depress the overall level of improvement in existing-home sales we expect as the year progresses,”

As usual, Lereah is having a hard time just accepting that sales are continuing to slide even on a year-over-year basis on top of last years historic fall-off.

Looking more closely at the results one might draw a less optimistic conclusion:

  • Nationally the index was down 8.5% as compared to February 2006.
  • The Northeast region was down 8.2% as compared to February 2006.
  • The West region was down 8.2% as compared to February 2006.
  • The Midwest region was down 9.7% as compared to February 2006.
  • The South region was down 8.0% as compared to February 2006.
So it appears that, year-over-year, contract activity is still dropping rather with ALL regions continuing to show significant declines.

Labels: , , ,

Copyright © 2013
PaperEconomy Blog - www.papereconomy.com
All Rights Reserved

Disclaimer

posted by SoldAtTheTop at 9:17 AM

5 Comments:

  • This comment has been removed by the author.

    By Blogger Kevin, at 12:56 PM  

  • What is more interesting than the 8.5% YOY decline is the fact that the media doesn't report straight facts and would rather talk about the slight national uptick in seasonally adjusted MOM sales which was only driven by the South and Midwest. So the South and the Midwest are having better than average season sales. The Northeast and West are not. Seems as those the hog investors have moved into hog towns. The 8.5% YOY seasonally adjusted number is huge!

    Tiny URL link goes to CNN Money Report...what a bunch of Lereah cock suckers.

    http://tinyurl.com/27kxym

    -Kevin

    By Blogger Kevin, at 1:59 PM  

  • the fact that the media doesn't report straight facts and would rather talk about the slight national uptick

    --

    The Media is not here to tell the TRUTH!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:10 PM  

  • This comment has been removed by the author.

    By Blogger Kevin, at 10:16 AM  

  • In the Baltimore Housing Bubble, sellers are having a hard time understanding that their houses are not worth what they are trying to sell them for. What I like to do to fuel the coming onslaught of housing decline is to go to open houses and offer 50% of their asking prices. I know this may sound cruel and unusually, but when the seller and their agents jaws drop, I simply point to the price on their open house flier and I also drop my jaw. Then I point to their hanging 60-inch plasma TV and I say, "My price also includes you throwing in that TV." This is when I usually get thrown out. It not like I was offender the other buyers...considering I’m almost always the only person looking at their home.

    I then proceed to walk next door to the neighbor’s house and go on with my script. I can spend a whole afternoon doing this in just one neighborhood. Call me sadistic, but I find this truly entertaining to see the seller reactions. Even better is the agent’s reaction. Sometimes I even pull out my check book and start writing a check. This usually gets sellers angry. So to make it even better, I start to write a second check out for 30% of the selling value, but I post date the second check for 9-months later. Then I ask the seller which check they would like. One guy was so pissed at my audacity that he called the cops on me. I decided to wait and see what the cops would do. When the cops arrived I explained to the cop that I was trying to buy a house. The cop tells the seller that if they are having an open house then I am allowed to come and make an offer for their home.

    I’m trying to get a movement started. Would anyone like to join?

    -Kevin

    By Blogger Kevin, at 10:17 AM  

Post a Comment



Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home

 
Top Real Estate Blogs Top Real Estate Blogs Blogarama - The Blog Directory Check Google Page Rank