Posted on 08/24/2010 9:26:01 AM PDT by Signalman
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With home sales plunging to their lowest level in 15 years, economists warn that a double-dip in housing prices is just around the corner, threatening to further slow the overall recovery.
Existing home sales sank 27.2% in July, twice as much as analysts expected, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units. Much of that drop is attributed to the end of the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit.
That credit brought buyers out in droves, as they tried to sign home contracts before the April 30 deadline. Now, two months later, sales are 34% below April's tax incentive-induced peak.
"Home sales were eye-wateringly weak in July," said economist Paul Dales of Capital Economics. "It is becoming abundantly clear that the housing market is undermining the already faltering wider economic recovery. With an increasingly inevitable double-dip in housing prices yet to come, thing could get a lot worse."
The sales pace of all homes -- single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops -- is at the lowest since NAR began tracking the figure in 1999. Sales of single-family homes, which account for a bulk of the transactions, are at the lowest level since May 1995.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Plunging home sales are a SYMPTOM not a Cause. Artificially propping them up will not do anything but delay the inevitable and necessary reconciliation.
Anything could hurt the slow recovery of the economy.
The question is, will it be housing?
Nobody knows.
The media really excels at whipping people into a panic.
There has not been any recovery, we are still the same mess only now it’s called a Depression.
What recovery?
Did I miss the glory days?
Recovery?
For what its worth...pay off your casa NOW or plan to walk away from it in the near future.
Blatant attempt to cover for Obamacrats.
If they didn’t diddle with the stimulus in the first place, we’d be better off, except we’d probably still have Obamacare, Credit Card reform and Financial reform. They actually aren’t reforms, they are nooses around the countries neck.
I have to agree with you there, and with the crew we have in office, and what they are doing to this country, it’s an easy thing to do.
What recovery?
Here’s something else Obama has done which hurts the economy.
I didn’t refinance my house when it got really expensive, to take out money and spend it. Lots of people did, and now they are underwater.
But even after housing prices plummetted, my current mortgage is still only about 25% of my home’s value, and now I am ready to do some work on the house and also put my kids through college.
So, I’m looking to refinance since interest rates are so low. Last time I did this, the total cost to me was about $300, because I went through my existing loan holder and they didn’t have to do anything.
But today, it will cost me thousands of dollars (well, over a thousand dollars, maybe not quite two thousand). It’s because of all the new regulations which supposedly will prevent another economic collapse. What it is really doing is keeping a lot of people from refinancing, taking out some reasonable equity, and spending it to boost the economy.
Excessive regulations are the worst kind of tax, because we can’t see them and their effects are hard to measure.
D E P R E S S I O N
Is a ten letter word.
That makes no sense. Why would you want to pay off your house? And why would the alternative be to walk away from it? If you had the money to pay off your house today, you'd likely still be able to pay it off a year from now.
And if you postulate that a year from now we WON'T have the money to pay off the house, then it would be crazy to pay it off now, because we'll need that money apparently for something else.
If we have inflation, we are better off NOT paying off debts, so long as those aren't stupidly in adjustable-rate mortgages.
Yes, if you have an adjustable-rate mortgage, you should pay it off, or refinance now to a fixed rate. But that's true just about any time.
People aren't in trouble because their houses are underwater. That's just a sad commentary on our condition. People are in trouble because they took mortgages they couldn't actually pay off, expecting to be able to refinance, take out MORE money, and use the principle to help pay the monthly mortgage. That was never a good strategy, and doomed to fail unless housing prices went up forever and you were the ONLY person living stupidly.
But for most of us, who didn't refinance beyond our means, there is no reason to panic now.
Whatever the increase in GDP, it was all fueled by GOVERNMENT, not private spending. Those programs are over and the GDP numbers will bear this out. We’ve been in the market for a home for 2 years now. Not even the 8K in taxpayer money entice us to buy into an overpriced market. Same for low interest rates. Oh well, maybe next year.
the question is if yhou blink will you miss the recovery??
What “recovery” there has been if you want to call it that has all been because of the outrageous government spending spree. Nothing, zip, nada in the private sector.
No cover for Obama or Bush here or for that matter the Democrat or Republican parties. They are both corrupt and hlped cause all this misery.
How many letters in depression then?
Democrat party’s version of summer of recovery.
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