Smashing Estate

After a long time there is good news for the US housing sector in December 2008 and that is the amount of homes sold was up. However, there is also bad news and that is the values paid for those homes were down.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports sales of earlier owned homes increased 6.5%, to 4.74 million last month, up from 4.45 million in last November. Above and beyond, the median sales price dropped 15.3%, to $175,400, from $207,000 in the year of December 2007. In this concern, Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the NAR said “The economy just simply cannot recover as long as home prices continue to decline.”

On the other hand, according to statistics the Triangle Multiple Listing Service triangle property sales in December 2008 fell almost 50%. This data was released last week and NAR report was released last Monday.

30-years old mortgage rates fell to a record level and dropping to the lowest mark since Freddie Mac started tracking the data nearly 28 years ago. The rates have been falling since the late November last year, when the Federal Reserve declared a plan to spend up to $500 billion to buy-up mortgage-backed securities in efforts to support the distressed U.S. housing market.

Freddie Mac reported that average rates on 30-year fixed mortgages dropped to 5.01 percent this week, down from the previous record of 5.1 percent set last week. The mortgage rates are at their lowest since he and the company started to survey in April 1971.

It is shocking news for Australian real estate industry as an industry survey of 100 residential builders has found that new home sales dropped by around 1.1% in November 2008. This survey result is released today (7, January) by the Housing Industry Association (HIA). According to HIA it is a big turnaround from October 2008 when sales boost up by 3%. The November turn down compares to an increase in overall new house sales of 4.5% registered in last October.

Chris Lamont, the association’s chief executive, said it is a disappointing result but given hopes that the raised first home owners grant and lower interest rates would increase activity. He added multi-unit sales followed up an 8.6% drop in October 2008 with even more falls in last November. He said fears of recession and tighter credit overcame declining interest rates. On the other hand, the survey got sales of private detached houses dropped 0.4%, whereas sales of multi-unit housing dropped 5.3%. According to his opinion, “Particularly the news was bad for the multi-unit sector, which recorded a drop of just under 5.3 per cent.” “So that’s bad news for investment in the sector and it’s also bad news for those seeking rental accommodation in 2009 and into 2010.” Lamont said sales activity in the second half of the previous year reflected the general economic slowdown and finally, difficulties faced in finding financing for new home construction.

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According to, the Commerce Department report, new home sales in the USA rose by 2.7% surprisingly in September as median home prices slumped to the lowest level in four years. Report say, sales of new one-family houses, have increased to an annualized pace of 464,000 units, above property market expectations of 458,000 units. Even though the statistics showed a monthly gain, it was still below 33.1% from the previous year, reflecting the record meltdown in the US real estate sector after a years-long boom.

The average sales value of new houses was $218,400, compared to $221,900 just a month earlier. Therefore, September rise in new property sales followed a 12.6% dropped in the last month. Moreover, the median home sales price of $218,400 was 9.1% lesser than the year-ago point. Besides, the figure is the lowest since the $211,600 level reached in the month of September 2004, when the property market was on the upswing. As a result, analysts who had been expecting a decline for previous month become surprised. On the other hand, the inventory of unsold property fell, at the end of September, slightly to 394,000 units, a supply of 10.4 months at the recent sales rate, below from 11.4 months for August 2008.

Regionally, new property sales decreased by 21.4% in the Northeast last month and were down 5.8 % in the Midwest. However, in the West home sales shot up by 22.7%. Sales in the South edged up 0.7% as well. While a report by the National Association Realtors last week showed that U.S. current home sales rate increased by 5.5 % previous month and that is the biggest gain in more than five years period because the lower home prices of September seem to have attracted many buyers since the housing inventory of 394,000 units was the lowest since the 383,000 homes for sale in the month of June 2004. Though analysts and experts said high inventories would continue to create pressure on prices. One of the rates strategists at RBC Barclays Capital Markets in New York, T.J. Marta said, “The tremendous overbuild suggests that prices will remain under year on year pressure out at least through mid-2009,” so wait to see what happen in futurer.