From Bloomberg last month:
Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in June to the lowest level in a decade as tumbling real- estate prices and consumer confidence signal no end in sight to a housing recession now in its third year.
Resales dropped 2.6 percent to a lower-than-forecast 4.86 million annual rate from a 4.99 million pace the prior month, the National Association of Realtors said today in Washington. The median home price dropped 6.1 percent from June of last year.
From Bloomberg today:
Existing U.S. home sales fell to a 10-year low in the second quarter and the median price for a single-family house dropped 7.6 percent as the real estate recession deepened.
The median tumbled to $206,500 from $223,500 a year earlier, the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors said today. Sales of single-family houses and condominiums fell 16 percent to 4.913 million at an annualized pace.
In terms of those transactions, “foreclosures and ‘short sales,’ in which lenders agree to take a loss on a property, accounted for a third of all sales in the quarter.”
And as they say, live by the median, die by the median (or something like that).
∙ U.S. Home Resale Rate Falls To Ten Year Low (And 33% Below 2005) [SocketSite]
∙ U.S. Home Sales Fall to 10-Year Low as Prices Tumble [Bloomberg]
Hey did anyone see that Zip Realty posted a $1.7M loss?
http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2008/08/04/daily72.html
Looks like those “discount” brokerage services are going down with the ship!
At that burn rate, they’ll run out of cash in a “mere” 7 years.
I’m sure they’re updating their resumes in anticipation of a quick demise — not.
It’s different in the “real SF.” (Why not embrace it?)
I wonder if in general short sales/foreclosures are used as comps. My understanding is that in general they are not. However, if they make up 1/3rd of sales then one could reasonably conclude that they are representative of a large chunk of the market
clearly, this hasn’t happened in SF yet though.
Many real estate agents are learning some basic math: five percent of nothing is nothing.
“Many real estate agents are learning some basic math: five percent of nothing is nothing.”
Many haters have yet to learn this lesson: Saying nothing about nothing they have no involvement with, online, and in a tone they would never use in polite society, is nothing X (times) approximately fifty ka-jillion.
Did I accidentally strike a nerve? You’re a commission salesman, right? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but what do you produce? Anything?
In my opinion, you’re constantly trying to bully contrarians, doubters, and naysayers about real estate on this site. You once stated in June that the Ritz-Carlton was a SOMA condo building, and when somebody politely pointed out to you that it’s actually north of Market Street, you dismissed that rudely, like a sixth-grader.
I’m not a real estate agent, but I am a potential customer. My opinion counts as much as a seller’s, but way more than an agent’s. In my view, the buyer and the seller are the principals; the agent is the parasite.
Anonymous – your “5% X nothing” comment comment is misdirected. Usually the sellers control the sales price, not the agent. I’m sure many agents are facing situations where they know a home is priced too high to make a sale but they may have limited influence over the sellers to get them to drop the price.
Ultimately the sales rate will return to normal. Market forces are just too powerful to overcome inertia.
And note that boom and bust cycles actually increase the overall transaction rate in the long run and hence boost RE agent’s commissions. If you had only a steady slowly appreciating market, you wouldn’t have appreciation speculators and flippers causing 2X the number of sales for a property via seller-speculator-buyer transaction pairs vs. the traditional direct seller-buyer transaction. A steady market also doesn’t trap buyers with mortgages they cannot afford resulting in additional transactions from unexpected and unwanted premature sales and foreclosures.
Realtors thinking long term will be just fine and might even make a killing during this bust cycle.
You’re just a snake in the grass without a name and nothing more.
“I wonder if in general short sales/foreclosures are used as comps.”
When a place is foreclosed and sold on the court house steps it is not counted as a comp as it is not an arms length transaction.
When a bank owned property is subsequently sold that is an arms length transaction and is counted as a comp.