I was interviewed by our local CBS affiliate a couple of weeks ago. They were doing a story on the slowing housing market. There was only anecdotal evidence of the slow-down. My view was that the current slow-down was the backlash from the Federal Tax Credits. I coined it, “Cash for Clunkers Comes to the Housing Market.”
This week the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) released the July sales figures. NAR states, “Existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, dropped 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units in July from a downwardly revised 5.26 million in June, and are 25.5 percent below the 5.14 million-unit level in July 2009.”
A couple of their charts say it all. The first is the Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate:
The second is the Months of Supply:
If my “Cash for Clunkers” analogy is correct, we will see prices continue to fall before they start rebounding.
While these are national numbers, it will be interesting to see how local markets are impacted as data become available.
