Existing Home Sales To Hold Steady In Early 2008
February 19th, 2008 categories: Home Buyers, Home Sellers, Prescott Real Estate Trends
Here is an atricle that I thought was interesting and was published in the Arizona Realtor magazine, Feb. 2008 issue.
Over the next few months, existing home sales are expected to hold fairly steady as indicated by pending sales activity, and then rise later in the year and continue to improve in 2009, according to the latest forecast by the National Association of Realtors.
Lawrence Yun, NAR Chief econimist, says there is a pull and tug exerting itself on the market. “One one hand, we have pent up demand from the four million jobs added to our economy of the past two years of sales decline”. On the other hand, consumers continue to wait for additional signs of market stabilization. There are more people with financial capacity now than in 2005, but many are trying to market time their purchase. As a result, the exact timing and the strenght of a home sales recovery is a bit uncertain. A meaningful recovery in existing homes could occur as early as this spring, or further delayed toward late 2008.
The pending homes sales index, a forwared looking indicator based on contract signed in November fell 2.6 percent to a reading of 87.6 from a strong upward revision of 89.9 inOctober, but remains above the August and September readings and indicated a broad stabilization. The index was 19.2 % below the November 2006 level of 108.4. “Although there could be some minor slippage in the first quarter, existing home sales should hold up in a narrow range before trending up”, Yun says.
