By:Dennis Norman
The National Association of REALTORS(R) just released their pending home sales index for November which shows pending sales (houses under contract to be sold but have not closed yet) are down 4% nationwide from October and down over 5% from a year ago. With all the recent bad economic news this is not surprising.
The Northeast region of the United States showed the biggest decrease from a year ago beign down over 14%. The Western region showed the best numbers with a 19% increase from a year ago. I think the large disparity between the regions proves two things:one,as many have said;“real estate is local”and two,as I wrote about in an earlier post lower prices are stimulating sales as is being proven in the Western region of the country. Prices are down but sales are up. I realize lower property values are hurting many people but the positive of it is there is a market still…once prices lowser to the point where buyers see value they come out of hiding and buy. One word of caution is many of these sales are to “speculators”,people that are buying them speculating they will rise in value in the near future. For the time being they will be rentals but once the market shows signs of recovery many of these homes will come back on the market which could again flood the market and put the breaks on a recovery. I guess it could be worse though……we could be in a situation where there are just not able and willing buyers out there regardless of price.
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