Has the latest swoon in home sales finally hit bottom?
Good news/bad news out this morning.
The bad news is that pending sales, the freshest data out there, fell for the fourth straight month in August here in the Bay State compared to the same time last year. Recall that this time last year we were still in the depths of the Great Recession.
Home sales fell 10 percent, year-over-year in August, while condo sales were down nearly 20 percent, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.
Still, on a month-over-month basis, August home sales edge up 1.7 percent from July - the first such increase since April during the height of the home buyer tax credit craziness.
Clearly, it does look like the swoon that followed the expiration of the $18 billion home buyer tax credit this spring has finally leveled out.
Nationally, pending sales have also posted a modest rebound after a deep, post-tax-credit decline.
While some of the regulars on this blog had long argued we were in for a deep drop in sales this summer after the tax credit went away, the depth of the downturn certainly caught many market observers off-guard.
The big question now is where do things go from here?
And that, of course, depends on the economy. Fears of a double dip recession appear to be easing slightly, yet jobless rates remain depressingly high and job growth remains anemic.
Even if we have hit bottom on the sales side, that likely means skidding along at a pretty low level for some time to come.
That, in turn, will continue to put some pretty heavy downward pressure on prices.
