Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for February again confirming, perfectly clearly, the tremendous weakness in the demand of existing residential real estate with both single family homes and condos declining uniformly across the nation’s housing markets.Although this continued and even worsening falloff in demand is mostly as a result of the momentous and ongoing structural changes that are taking place in the credit-mortgage markets, consumer sentiment surveys are now indicating that consumers are materially feeling the current recessionary trend which will likely result in even further significant sales declines to come.
Furthermore, we are now seeing solid declines to the median sales price for both single family homes and condos across virtually every region with the most notable occurring in the West showing a decline of 13.8% to the median single family home sales price and a decline of 14.5% to the median condo price.
NAR senior economist Lawrence Yun now optimistically predicts that there will be a “notable” gain in existing home sales as new FHA limits and other government bailout plans work to “unleash” pent-up demand.
“We’re not expecting a notable gain in existing-home sales until the second half of this year, but the improvement is another sign that the market is stabilizing, … Buyers taking advantage of higher loan limits for both FHA and conventional mortgages will unleash some pent-up demand. As inventories are drawn down, prices in many markets should go positive later this year.”
Meanwhile NAR president Dick Gaylord, makes another attempt to lure prospective buyers to the trust of local realtors.
“Consumers need to be aware of local market conditions and comparable sales prices to have a clear picture of a home’s value, … realtors understanding of local markets, negotiating expertise, and transaction experience are invaluable to both buyers and sellers, today as much as ever.”
In reality though, realtors, realtor economists and the realtor association have been nearly unanimously (and all too conveniently) wrong in their predictions for the outcome of the housing decline consistently misjudging the severity of declines in both sales and prices and providing very poor guidance to the millions of recent homeowners who now are facing tremendous economic stress.
The latest report provides, yet again, truly stark and total confirmation that the nation’s housing markets are declining dramatically with EVERY region showing significant double digit declines to sales of BOTH single family and condos as well as large increases to inventory and a continued explosion in monthly supply as a result of the collapsing pace of sales.
Keep in mind that these declines are coming “on the back” of TWO SOLID YEARS of dramatic declines further indicating that the housing markets are truly in the process of a tremendous correction.
The following (click for larger versions) are charts showing sales for single family homes, plotted monthly, for 2006, 2007 and 2008 as well as national existing home inventory and month supply.
Below is a chart consolidating all the year-over-year changes reported by NAR in their most recent report.
