Comments on: Pending Home Sales Index

By: simon

simon — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:17:46 +0000

Who’s buying houses? and where do they get the money from?

By: shtove

shtove — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:03:44 +0000

What the hell is a blib??

By: sailorman

sailorman — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:41:52 +0000

I am actively involved in the South Florida housing market. I can say from personal experience that banks are lowering prices dramatically and now there are multiple offers on bank owned properties.

The incompetence of the banks is slowing the closing rates, but there is a lot of activity in the foreclosed housing market and many houses are going to contract.

By: FINANCIALsight

FINANCIALsight — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:42:08 +0000

Today the NAR made dramatic downward revisions to their home price projections. Last month, their forecast for home prices for the third quarter was $226,300 (compared to the current median of $202,300.) This month they dropped their third quarter forecast to $208,400. I have some charts on Pending Home Sales and the NAR forecasts here:

http://financialsight.blogspot.com/2008/06/pending-home-sales-improve-nar-revises.html

By: John

John — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:24:51 +0000

On the street where I live in CT one of the smaller homes has just been sold for 15% less than they were asking for it by a family that are having to sell up to avoid being foreclosed. Basically, according to gossip, they leveraged the house and frittered the money away on fancy cars, knick knacks and home improvements they haven’t got the money back for. And these are basically a two income upper middle class family. Interesting times.

By: MarkTX

MarkTX — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:18:16 +0000

A sign of the times…..or bad humor?

Go ahead and add 1 to the “pending home sales”

Mark that as one to the good…..

The governor’s mansion in Texas was burned down yesterday (while under renovation). Wonder how much that is going to cost the taxpayers and who is the “person of interest.”

http://tinyurl.com/3ef5gv

By: stanleyb

stanleyb — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:12:32 +0000

I’m hearing a frightening large number of morons around the office, at the club and even at church talk about, “Oh, now that property’s cheaper, we should buy some.”

These posers don’t even know what a GRM is. They couldn’t successfully fill out a loan application to buy a rental property if their life depended on it, because even the most basic rental property stats are beyond their comprehension. The only way these turkeys will ever get into the market is by fraud and liar’s loans that were intended for owner occupied property, NOT rentals for newbie landlords.

If there’s a bank stupid enough to enable these frauds, then get ready for the next wave of Foreclosures to follow.

As someone who got the actual BUSINESS loans that are required for a rental BUSINESS, it just fills me with disgust. These newbies are set for failure from they day they buy with a GRM of 42.

I tell them they can’t hope to succeed with a property at a GRM over 20, and that 12 is preferred, and they just look at me blankly. “But it’s 10% lower! It’s on sale! I’m gonna make big bucks now!”

Meanwhile locally there are so many landlords that have gone into foreclosure that the local utilities have all started special tenant payment programs to deal with non-paying landlords who are skimming both ends, taking in the rent but not paying the utilities that are supposedly included with the rental.

By: michael schumacher

michael schumacher — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:52:01 +0000

regards to the update:

The San Diego “business section”-all of 2-3 pages on a good day had this as it’s top of the page:

“investors should be asking if now’s the time to buy-not the time to sell”

Taken from that wonderful bastion of level headed financial acumen known as “Smart Money”…

Gotta love that.

Ciao
MS

By: michael schumacher

michael schumacher — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:40:34 +0000

Just a continuation of “more fun with data”

Total noise…..

Ciao
MS

By: Rob Dawg

Rob Dawg — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:28:22 +0000

“Pending Sales” == “The check is in the mail.” When Realtors® start paying income taxes on their pendings rather than their closings I’ll start paying attention to pendings.

Let us not forget that Easter was in March this year so anything short of a meteor was bound to make April look better.