Home prices finally hitting bottom?
The double dip we are seeing in home prices is being treated as some sort of stunning new development. As is everything in no today's no context, memory-of-a-gnat news media.
Home prices and sales fell again in March, according to both the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
The Bay State's median home sale price dipped to $267,250 in March, down 2.8 percent from March, 2010, according to the Warren Group. Home sales were down 14 percent year-over-year.
Yet it was only a matter of time before prices headed down again.
In fact, I would argue it's even good news, as in an alcoholic finally coming to grips with his drinking problem or a couple facing up to huge problems they had denied for years.
Especially here in Greater Boston, we've lived so long with inflated home prices that we have begun to simply take this as the natural order of things.
But the global financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed shifted the economic paradigm - and the residential real estate market is now scrambling to catch up.
The home buyer tax credit postponed the inevitable, artificially buoying real estate values only to send sales and then prices off a cliff when the industry-backed gimmick expired last spring.
But with that crutch gone, home prices are finally headed towards a long-awaited bottom - frankly this would have happened a couple years ago if it hadn't been for the home buyer tax credit.
This could be good news for buyers looking for a deal - though jumping into a declining market can be risky business as well.
There are other big questions as well. Will the market hit bottom this year, or will the declines head into 2012? And even as prices decline, how much of an impact will the double dip have on still fairly inflated markets like Greater Boston?
After all, prices have actually gone up in some pockets within the 128 corridor, such as Cambridge and parts of Somerville.
Stay tuned.
