National Association of Realtors: “Sales recovery has begun”
Who knew? I mean I was worried there for a while. I am truly, truly sorry for all my gloomy posts of late about falling home sales and now prices headed south as well.
Clearly, I had it all wrong. Really, I should have been listening to my inner optimist and staying away from such bad influences as Case Shiller, Calculated Risk or even now our local Realtors group, which at some point stopped seeing an instant recovery just around every corner.
Somehow I missed this latest bit of wisdom from Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
A man of many bold predictions, Yun is once again calling the bottom of the market and proclaiming that the long-awaited housing market recovery is at hand.
Sales of existing homes across the country increased 10 percent in September, even as median home price nationally fell to $171,700, a 2.4 percent drop from September, 2009, NAR reports.
Well who needs those pesky prices when sales are on the rise!
Without further verbiage from me, here's Yun.
"A housing recovery is taking place but will be choppy at times depending on the duration and impact of a foreclosure moratorium," Yun is quoted as saying in the NAR press release. "But the overall direction should be a gradual rising trend in home sales with buyers responding to historically low mortgage interest rates and very favorable affordability conditions," he said.
Enough of that already. So what's the real story here? Certainly not recovery, but rather a parting present from the home buyer tax credit.
Recall that buyers had to put home under agreement by the end of April and then close sales by the end of June, that is until Congress stepped in and extended the closing deadline.
And you guessed it, the new closing date is none other than Sept. 30th.
So it seems pretty clear this is the last batch of sales stemming from the $18 billion home buyer tax credit.
Nice try NAR. But not exactly a "sales recovery."
