Today, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for November 2007 showing again the utter foolishness of MAR president Doug Azarian’s yearlong optimistic sentiment.In fact, MAR reports that in November, single family home sales plummeted 12.6% as compared to November 2006 with a median price decline of 2.9%.
Not to be deterred by the latest downturn in sales, Azarian continues his attempt to bamboozle the hapless homebuyer with a fresh take on deceptive spin:
“If your New Year’s resolution is to buy a home, you have the market to do it in, … We are in a ‘buyer’s market’ that really favors first-time homebuyers who don’t have a home to sell. In fact, first-time homebuyers could be one of the keys to reversing the downward sales trend of the last several months.”
Like the new spin? How about some of Azarian’s past attempts from earlier this year:
April 2007 – “The housing market in Massachusetts is gaining momentum and we can continue to feel good about where it is headed. With prices remaining stable and supplies decreasing, we can expect the spring home buying season to be active.”
June 2007 – “We can speculate that demand will continue to go up during the second half of the year.”
August 2007 – “If inventory and supply continue to decline, we should see prices remaining steady, if not continuing to tick up, through the rest of the summer and the fall,”
September 2007 – “Combined with the recent interest rate drop by the Fed and continued legislative action on Capitol Hill, the potential for continued sales growth through the fall is good.”
Is Azarian ignorant?
No. He’s a professional business owner with a vested interest in attempting to spin the outlook so as to profit from your home purchase.
Does he care that he might succeed in goading first time home buyers into making purchases near the top of a historic deflationary price spiral?
No. That’s precisely his goal.
As usual, The Warren Group’s latest figures were significantly different than that of MARs showing single family sales down 15.4% and a median price decline of 5.8% as compared to November of 2006.
We are now clearly seeing the result of the mortgage-credit meltdown with home sales resuming double digit year-over-year declines in September, October and November and even more notably, coming on the back of last year’s historic falloff.As I predicted, the last three monthly results of the S&P/Case-Shiller index for Boston has shown renewed price declines indicating that as the mortgage-credit crisis unwinds, our area is not immune.
To better illustrate the drop-off in home prices and the potential length and depth of the current housing decline, I have compared BOTH the year-over-year and peak percentage changes to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index for Boston (BOXR) from the 80s-90s housing bust to today’s bust (ultra-hat tip to the great Massachusetts Housing Blog for the concept).
The “year-over-year” chart compares the percentage change, on a year-over-year basis, to the BOXR from the last positive value through the decline to the first positive value at the end of the decline.In this way, this chart captures only the months that showed monthly “annual declines” and as we can see, if history is to be a guide, we could be about one third of the way through the annual price declines with the majority of falling prices yet to come.
The “peak” chart compares the percentage change, comparing monthly BOXR values to the peak value seen just prior to the first declining month all the way through the downturn and the full recovery of home prices.
In this way, this chart captures ALL months of the downturn from the peak to trough to peak again.
As you can see the last downturn lasted 105 months (almost 9 years) peak to peak including 34 months of annual price declines during the heart of the downturn.
As in months past, be on the lookout for the inflation adjusted charts produced by BostonBubble.com for an even more accurate "real" view of the current market trend.
November’s Key Statistics:
- Single family sales declined 12.6% as compared to November 2006
- Single family median price decreased 2.9% as compared to November 2006
- Condo sales declined 14.2% as compared to November 2006
- Condo median price increased 1.9% as compared to November 2006
- The number of months supply of single family homes stands at 11.0 months.
- The number of months supply of condos stands at 12.2 months.
- The average “days on market” for single family homes stands at 133 days.
- The average “days on market” for condos stands at 141 days.
