Existing Home Sales Rebound to Two-Year High

[sabra]

Source: CNBC/AP

Home resales rose far more than expected last month to the highest level in more than two years as buyers scrambled to complete their purchases before a tax credit for first-time owners expires.

The National Association of Realtors says sales rose 9.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.57 million in September, from a downwardly revised pace of 5.1 million in August.

Sales had been expected to rise to an annual pace of 5.35 million, according to economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

The median sales price was $174,900, down 8.5 percent from a year earlier, but the smallest annual drop in 13 months.

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/33447930

[FreakinDJ]

1. Oh NO - Heaven Forbid - Obama recovery plan is working

Oh No - The Short Sellers the Short Sellers

Soon it will be raining short sellers as wiped out short selling market analyst leap to their death from tall buildings on Wall St

[dysfunctional press]

22. wait til two months from now...

unless they extend the first-time buyer's credit- the 'trend' in real estate sales is going to be very different.

[Craftsman]

2. A girl in my office bought a home 2 months ago

It was a foreclosure, dirt cheap but her boyfriend bailed and now she is struggling.

[WriteDown]

3. Rule #1...

Never buy a house with your boyfriend/girlfriend.

[Craftsman]

4. 1st time buyer with the tax credit. My money is she will be foreclosed on

by Easter.

[WriteDown]

5. Poor kid....

Terrible decision though.

[No Elephants]

26. Not a lot worse a decision than buying a place with a spouse, maybe even a business partner.

Or buying a place alone, then losing your job or having some invention or other factor render your own business more of a loser than it was when you made the buying decision. Or having the Republicans put the country into a black hole economically.

Life happens. People buy homes anyway.

[No Elephants]

25. 'Cause married couples never split up?

[Craftsman]

6. 45% first time buyers, 29% distressed properties....yeah that's sustainable.

http://www.realtor.org/files/research/4c8e4efb84e487ad1090d2215927f1b4/rel0909ehs.pdf

[Barack_America]

8. The 29% distressed properties is sustainable.

No shortage of those.

:(

[BR_Parkway]

9. And that's before the bulk of REO comes online plus the Alt A's and CRE

crashes next quarter

[Barack_America]

7. Key word "rebound", not "recover".

These numbers are going to crash again next month, after the credit runs out.

Wintertime and no tax credit? They're going to hit rock bottom.

Still I guess it will allow Obama to claim a stimulus victory as it will become very obvious that the stimulus has been propping these numbers up for months. But on the other hand it will be revealed that the stimulus hasn't stabilized the economy overall.

[Craftsman]

11. More of a dead cat bounce

[robcon]

10. Good news. I still think the recession will be over early next year.

Reason for continued optimism.

[Barack_America]

12. Oh. Methinks you're going to get a nasty Christmas present.

These numbers are wholly dependent on the stimulus's first-time homebuyer credit, which runs out soon.

I believe in optimism, but we need to be realistic about the state of our housing market. It will get better, but not for a while.

[Craftsman]

14. Yep, that is when the depression starts

The key indicator to look at is jobs. No jobs, no recovery.

[robcon]

15. The key indicator is to look at the leading indicators index.

The index is trending up.

That's the precursor of jobs.

[Craftsman]

16. For many the only indicator they look at is the pay stub and how far it spends

Both are still trending down.

[Le Taz Hot]

27. Not in a service-based economy it's not.

It's a new economic game and your model presupposes manufacturing as being integral in the recovery process. The reality is that those jobs are not coming back anytime soon.

By all accounts, this will be AT LEAST a 10-year process and it will NEVER get back to pre-recession levels. Enter the underground economy which is the way people who are struggling survive.

[IrateCitizen]

21. Good luck with that

Especially when the economy, pre-crash, was about 70% consumer spending.

Now, people (if they have jobs) are saving more and spending less. How does that 70% slice of the economy recover in those circumstances?

Personally, I think that anyone who is expecting a real, broad-based recovery is deluding themselves. But that's just me.

[jpak]

13. Pfffft - if Palin was president home sales would have climbed ***94%****

Someone had to say it...

:D

[IrateCitizen]

17. CNBC? They're not trying to re-hype a housing bubble into existence, are they?

:eyes:

[bluestateguy]

18. Calling the doomers and the gloomers, you are needed here

nt

[dysfunctional press]

23. not if people read the article.

once the first-time credit is gone- so is the blip of a 'boom' in the housing market.

[Crowman1979]

19. When I saw the letters CNBC, I knew it was another corporatist pep-rally story.

Corporatist
Nymphos
Banging
CEOs

[Igel]

20. Call it a distortion.

A lot of the people who were fence sitters got into the game.

This means two things. (1)A large proportion of those probably would have bought a house in the near year. We've scraped all those buyers into 8 months or so in 2009, leaving fewer for 2010.

(2) You've now introduced coupons into house buying. Coupons are a sellers nightmare. While they can be good for moving gobs of stuff and making year-end targets, they also prime the consumer to expect and wait for coupons. Why buy at $2.96 when I can get a 0.20 coupon next week or the week after?

The realtors know this. They want to do two things. (A) Remove the coupon's expiration date and plaster the streets with them. (B) They want to increase the value of the coupon, to shake loose those who are still not willing to get into the game.

(1) and (2) mean that looking at the house stats for the next year is probably a waste of time. They won't say what they would have said without the market distortion. (A) and (B) also mean that the market's likely to be depressed until all talk of any potential renewed, or even expanded, refundable tax credit is so completely ruled out that buyers are convinced that it won't happen.

The $7500 tax credit (repayable over 15 years) was a bad idea. Cranking it up and making it refundable wasn't a good idea, either, in the long term. It made more people able to afford more house without resetting their expectations from "how much can I buy" to "how much can I maintain".

[TomCADem]

24. K&R