Collapsedachusetts Existing Home Sales Preview: August 2009

Sources inside the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) report that tomorrow’s monthly existing home sales results will show that in August single family home sales were up only slightly increasing 0.4% on a year-over-year basis while condo declined 3.5% over the same period.

Further, the single family median selling price declined 3.1% on a year-over-year basis to $315,000 while condo median prices dropped 4.6% to $279,000.

These results firmly indicate that, after a strong seasonal bounce in sales activity fueled primarily by the government's $8000 “homebuyer” tax bribe, sales are heading down sharply into the fall.

It’s important to note that although single family home sales were up marginally on a year-over-year basis, sales dropped 9.1% since July STRONGLY defeating the typical seasonal pattern of higher sales in August versus July.

This indicates that the June and July sales volume was likely strongly influenced by the “homebuyer” tax handout as recipients raced to lock their share of the transfer payments.

Massachusetts also assisted the process by lending first-time “buyers” “their” $8000 “credit” in advance so that buyers could apply it to their “downpayments”.

In any event, the government meddling only yielded a 0.4% year-over-year increase in home sales which appears to indicate that September sales could take a significant drop as “stimulated” sales continue to drop off and organic sales volume shows itself to be very weak.

The following charts (click for larger) show the decline in single family home sales since 2005.