Yesterday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their existing home sales report for the first quarter of 2008 showing, in truly stark terms, the tremendously broad nature of the housing downturn.Single family home sales, on a year-over-year basis, are now falling in every state except for Indiana, Alaska and New Jersey (see chart below and click for larger version and note that NH doesn’t report sales data).
Worse yet, Q1 2008 home sales on an annualized basis compared to peak home sales set between 2005 and 2007 showed significant declining home sales in virtually every state (see chart below and click for larger version) except for Alaska and Indiana.
As for median selling prices, the NAR’s data (see chart below) also shows truly tremendous and widespread weakness among the statistical regions they track with virtually EVERY (147 of the 157 NAR tracks … some of the remaining 10 declined but didn’t report enough data for prior years to be included in a peak comparison) metro region showing significant declines from their respective peaks set between 2005 and 2007 and MOST (99 of the 147) metro regions showing declines as compared to Q1 2007.
Given that the majority of price declines have just begun to show in 2007, look for this price chart to continue to deteriorate in coming quarters.Also, keep in mind that the NAR data only includes sales for MLS listed properties and given this limitation, the S&P/Case-Shiller index for each respective major metro should be considered a far more accurate price reference.
Amazingly, even given the obvious completeness of the housing downturn shown by their own data, the NAR officials are terming the results “Unusual” with their president, Richard Gaylord, blatantly continues the Realtor tradition of shameless self interested spin.
“It’s more important than ever to examine what’s happening with home prices at the city and neighborhood level, … The old real estate mantra of ‘location, location, location’ is perhaps more relevant today than ever before. Consumers should check with REALTORS® for local expertise on what’s going on in their own area because conditions can vary considerably from one neighborhood to the next.”
