Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Home sales plunge 27 pct. to lowest in 15 years - Yahoo! News

Home sales plunge 27 pct. to lowest in 15 years - Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas. July's sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.
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Sales were weakest in the low to mid-priced range. That's especially troubling. This isn't just the end of the McMansion era. This is middle-class housing.

5 comments:

Hal (GT) said...

What a mess this economy is proving to be. Kind of makes you wonder just what happened to all those green shots.

Anonymous said...

The bulk of the homes will be HOA-burdened homes. Obviously the HOAs are not "preserving property values" and never have. Hopefully this transition will begin to erode the proliferation of HOA burdened property if not the existing HOA-burdened property!

Tom Skiba said...

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Based on what data. It's easy to throw a statement like this out there since it sounds so obvious and believable, but there is no data to back such a claim up one way or the other.

Since about 1/5 of homes in the US are in community associations including HOAs, condos, and co-ops combined, I would expect the overall impact on the market to be similar, allowing for the fact that condos have taken a much more substantial hit than other forms of housing in the past 24 months.

The only single thing that will "erode the proliferation of HOA burdened housing" is if local governments determine that it is not in their own financial self-interest.

Fred Pilot said...

"The only single thing that will "erode the proliferation of HOA burdened housing" is if local governments determine that it is not in their own financial self-interest."

There we have it: A clear and unambiguous statement from a community assn industry leader that the privatization of local government is local government public policy.

Don't like that policy? Change it and don't elect those who support it!

Tom Skiba said...

In response to Fred's comment above: This is news?

Local governments encourage and even require associations because they enable new home (and tax revenue) development while minimizing governments liability for services and their associated costs. Which also serves to keep property taxes down for all residents.

Developers like them because they can frequently squeeze higher density approvals from the local government as a result and they can exercise greater control over the community through the development and sales/marketing process.

And of course the environmentalists like them because they promote denser housing and less "sprawl" and the urban planners like them because, well I am not sure why, but they do.

You can choose to like or dislike the results of this public policy decision, but the concrete reality is there are 60 million Americans living in more than 300,000 associations of one kind or another that need to be led, managed, and maintained and as Evan has pointed out frequently in recent posts local and state government budgets are not in any position to take on additional responsibilities and their attendant expenses should these associations go away.