How does it look? Homebuilder confidence index and the homebuilders are in the dumps after the confidence bumped up after the turn of the year. The index shows that anything over 50 is in the positive and below in the negative. We are at 30 today. That is the lowest since September, which at the time the homeowners thought was the bottom.
It looked like we had bottomed out for this measure and most measures of housing demand like this one is showed stabilization for the end of 2006 improving a little bit at the first part of this year and then Wham. We got it with the sub prime mortgage mess and the infection of other parts of the mortgage market as well.
The National Association of Realtors put our a report that says the market is stabilizing Why? Well because in the first part of this year the median family home price was $212,300 down 1.8% from a year ago but not as bad as the fourth quarter of last year when prices were down 2.7% in year over year. So that is where realtor’s are jumping on those stabilization bandwagons. They did not however use the “F” word, which is foreclosures. Realty Tracs monthly reports shows that foreclosure activity down one percent from March to April but analyst there call that flat and disappointing because foreclosures are up 62% from April of 2006.
Unlike the recession in the early 1990′s when confidence was in the 20′s the economic fundamentals of housing are still there demand and job growth. We just have to get through all the mess.
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Tags: Foreclosure Market, Housing Market, Mortgage News, National Association of Home Builders
