Houston's Rate Sheet

Existing Home sales down again

Existing home sales have fallen for the fifth straight month. According to the National Association of Realtors sales of previously owned homes dropped by 2.8 percent. As I posted yesterday, I don't think this makes much of a difference to Houstonians. Our housing market seems to be going fairly strong and price should remain quite stable.

Joel Naroff, Chief Economist for Commerce Bank, does not have an optimistic vision for the real estate sector. Here's what he had to say:

Pssssssst. That is the sound of the air coming out of the housing market. Existing home sales fell in February, following the lead of new home sales. The real weakness is, not surprisingly, in the condo market. All those speculators who had a great thing going for a couple of years have begun to bail out. As for single-family homes, the downturn is more restrained, though serious nonetheless. Total sales were the slowest in almost two years. Regionally, the Northeast and Midwest were off sharply, sales moderated in the West and they were up the South. Despite the weakening sales situation, prices did not falter very much and were actually up in the Northeast. But demand is dropping and supply is rising. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in economics to know what the implication of that is: It’s Wal-Mart time – “Watch out for falling prices!”

posted by Vincent Biondillo @ 10:34 AM