Monthly Archives: September 2011

We did see some right results for housing last week, and hopefully we've been working joyfully and peacefully to bring them about. Realtor.com reported that inventories of homes, condos, townhouses and co-ops shrank in August for the fourth month in a row. They're now down 19% from a year ago, and rest at 2.27 million units. Dropping inventories do keep home prices from falling and, supporting this, the national median list price was unchanged from June and July and up about 0.5% from a year ago, at $189,900.

The great opportunity now is for home buyers to get a mortgage at an historically low rate. Freddie Mac reported national average mortgage rates set new record lows last week. But according to most observers, buyers shouldn't expect further rate dips. Lenders are seeing plenty of loan volume, so they don't have to lower pricing to get more activity.

Major progress has yet to be made in the housing recovery, but we can keep believing in it, since the data isn't all negative. For example, Pending Homes Sales (contracts on existing homes) were down 1.3% in July, but were UP 2.4% in June, so Existing Home Sales should be up for August. In addition, July's reading was UP 14.4% over last year. The National Association of Realtors chief economist said, "rising rents, record high affordability conditions and investors buying real estate as a future inflation hedge" bode well for real estate.