Archive for the ‘Real Estate Market’ Category

According to the National Association of Realtors, existing home sales jumped 5.1% nationwide in February, 2009, though prices were down 15.5% from the same month last year. Sales prices were unprecedented, falling to the same lows last seen in 1997, and economists are predicting that, nationwide, prices will probably fall well into 2009. Nicolas Retsinas, [...]

Oddly, and quite unexpectedly, housing starts jumped in February, 2009, showing a 22.2% increase over January. Though the increase was welcome news in some corners, housing construction remains 47.3% off the mark from last year and most of the February gain came from the construction of apartments, which tend to be more volatile than construction [...]

I wrote yesterday about my Christmas wish list. The news that 2008 will see the evaporation of $2 Trillion worth of home value goes right against the grain of everything warm and fuzzy and “holiday-like,” but I’m going to write about it here anyway. And hope that a lot of that value comes back in [...]

To all those trying to sell a home in Maryland - believe me, I know how you feel. And, no, this is not some attempt by me to cozy up to any would-be readers and offer a sympathetic word. I know what it’s like to have a home on the market now because I DO [...]

After expectations of dismal home sales numbers for October, the National Association of Realtors released numbers last week indicating that sales declined just 0.7%, well below the 3% decline predicted by the Wall Street Journal.
Sales of foreclosure properties are being attributed as the reason for the better-than-expected numbers. From a Wall Street Journal post:
Credit Suisse [...]

I’ve spoken of the massive potential upside to the lower mortgage rates that are being heavily lobbied for by the National Association of Realtors, the National Home Builders Association and by countless other groups. If those and other groups have their way, we’ll be looking at 4.5% 30-Year mortgage rates (or lower) in the near [...]

Maryland saw a 16% drop in foreclosures during the third quarter - as compared to the second quarter - according to a recent Baltimore Sun article. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the drop will be a temporary respite as a series of events are lining up to knock the rosy numbers back into oblivion.
Foreclosure numbers [...]

I wrote a few weeks ago about a big one-day jump in selected real estate investment trusts (REITs), noting that the Dow Jones Equity all REIT index was up 12% in one day. Well, cancel that positive sentiment. REIT equities lost about 20% of their value yesterday in public trading, the worst day even for [...]

Don’t tell certain green building enthusiasts and companies that home sales fell 17% last quarter. They’re choosing not to listen. According to a recent Wall Street Journal blog post, the seventh annual GreenBuild Expo finished up in Boston last week and saw almost 30,000 people looking through green home building wares, ranging from the photovoltaic [...]

With the incredible amount of focus on Wall Street of late, as well as a general gnashing of teeth over the compensation to corporate executives of financial services and investment banking firms, the Wall Street Journal points out that lesser know home builders, who have largely escaped public scrutiny of late, often took home more [...]