Catastrophe Worsens for Housing Market — Home Prices and Home Sales Fall Again

As Congress meets to bailout the financial industry and George Bush vies with Freddie Krueger for the nation’s archetypal face of visceral terror, the latest report from the Census Bureau shows that the housing catastrophe continues to get worse. 

Here’s the summary of the bad news:

• New homes sales in August dropped to the lowest level since January 1991.
• Home prices hit a four-year low. 
• Inventory continues to rise, creating more downward pressure for home prices.

And here are some of the ugly new numbers:

• New home sales had a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 460,000, down 11.5 percent from a revised 520,000 in July and down 24.5 percent from a year ago.
• Only 39,000 new homes were sold in July, the lowest level since December 1991.
• Prices for new homes were at their lowest level since September 2004.
• The median price of a new home sold in August was $221,900, down 5.5 percent from $234,900 in July and down 6.2 percent from $236,500 a year ago.
• 166,000 new homes came on the market in August, bringing total inventory to a seasonally adjusted 408,000, equal to 10.9-month supply, up from a 10.3 month supply in July.
• New home sales fell 31.9 percent in the Northeast, 2.1 percent in the South and 36.1 percent in the West. Only the Midwest showed an increase in new home sales, up 7.2 percent.
• Three out of four builders reported having to pay buyers’ closing costs or offer other incentives such as expensive features for free in order to maintain sales.

The housing market is so bad that the main cheerleader for an I-can-see-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel approach to the real estate crisis – the National Association of Realtors (NAR) – has finally admitted, albeit with NAR’s typical understatement of the obvious, that “the pendulum in the mortgage market has swung too far.”

But if you’re looking for a bright side to the nation’s residential real estate fire sale, NAR’s number one Pollyanna-in-Chief, economist Lawrence Yun, still has a bromide to offer.

“August sales reflect higher interest rates before the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and the sudden drop in mortgage interest rates over the past couple weeks is improving housing affordability,” Yun said. “With higher loan limits and a beefing up of the FHA program, all the mechanisms have been falling into place to increase mortgage availability.”

Yeah.  Right.

Home Prices Slip Again in Biggest Fall on Record

Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas fell in April 2008 by the most on record.

The Case-Shiller Index of 20 large cities for April 2008 shows housing price declines are accelerating, and are now falling at a rate of 15.3% from last year’s levels.

The report also showed that home prices fell 1.4 percent in April from a month earlier after a 2.2 percent decline in March.

There’s one bit of “good” news in the report: home price declines were less than expected.  According to economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, the index was forecast to fall 16 percent from a year earlier.

Not surprisingly, the housing bust continues to be most severe in previous boom areas in the West and Florida. 

Here are the markets where prices are falling fastest:

Las Vegas: -26.8%
Miami: -26.7%
Phoenix: -25.0%
Los Angeles: -23.1%
San Diego: -22.4%
San Francisco: -22.1%

Average of 20 large cities: -15.3%

The decline in home prices appears to be spreading.  Chicago showed a 9.3 percent decline and prices in New York City declined by 8.4 percent.  Charlotte, North Carolina, showed a decline for the first time.

According to Bloomberg.com, “One bright spot in the report was that more cities showed a gain in prices in April compared with the previous month. Houses in eight areas rose in value, compared with just two in March. Month-over-month gains were led by Cleveland and Dallas.”

 

Housing Meltdown Continues as Home Prices Fall 14.1 Percent

Despite a slight uptick in the sales of new homes, there is new evidence that the U.S. housing slump will not end anytime soon. 

Yesterday the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Index showed that national home prices fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988.

And even though the sales of new homes were up slightly in April, they remained near their lowest levels since 1991.

New home sales were up 3.3 percent from March, but were down a stunning 42 percent from a year ago.

April’s new home sales were the second-lowest since October 1991, behind only March of this year.

The National Association of Realtors, in its typically disingenuous fashion, spins these bleak figures as an “easing” of home sales.

According to the New York Times, “Even markets that once seemed immune to the slump, like Seattle, are weakening. Prices nationwide might fall as much as 10 percent more before a recovery takes hold, economists said. As the home-buying season enters what is traditionally its busiest period, there are simply too many homes in many parts of the country, and too few people with the means to buy them. The situation is likely to get worse because a rising tide of foreclosures is flooding the market with even more homes, while a slack economy and tight mortgage market are reducing the pool of potential buyers.”

Those who can hold on to their properties are not selling at current prices and those who can buy are waiting for prices to fall still lower.

And they will get lower.

With more than 4.5 million homes on the market, and with a rising tide of foreclosures that continues to add dramatically to that figure, prices are certain to continue to fall even further.

There is plenty of money waiting for prices to stabilize, but that won’t happen for quite a while.

First, something must be done to stop the flood of foreclosures that are adding to the nation’s already overloaded housing supply.

Second, the banks and lenders must respond to the Federal Reserve’s lowering of interest rates by passing these lower rates on to more borrowers.

Our guess is that little or nothing will happen on these fronts until after the presidential election.

Meanwhile, the meltdown continues.