Comments on: Grasping at any good news I can find

By: Some good news | Real Central VA

Some good news | Real Central VA — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:30:28 +0000

[...] Keeping with my grasping at good news theme: [...]

By: fred

fred — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:21:46 +0000

Interesting article link!

Jim’s right when he says “a large part of the market is psychology.”

Sellers just don’t want to come down, despite glut of houses, our poor economy, and the credit crisis.

From the NYTimes:

http://tinyurl.com/2dc9rx

By: cVillain » Blog Archive » Charlottesville Real Estate Ready to Hurt?

cVillain » Blog Archive » Charlottesville Real Estate Ready to Hurt? — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:02:11 +0000

[...] [Read the full story at RealCentralVA.com] [...]

By: Jim Duncan

Jim Duncan — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 11:18:11 +0000

I’ve seen more activity – a multiple offer situation on a very-smartly-priced house – and properties languishing for a variety of reasons. There does not seem to be a discernible trend (yet) other than well-priced homes are in fact, selling.

The fact that we are in a declining market is going to pull more buyers out of the pool, while demand is increasing.

AC – keep pointing out context like that and I’ll have to ban you from the blog. You are absolutely right, but … any kind up uptick is worth noting. I do believe that a large part of the market is psychology; fundamentals are not good, but there’s also a lot of bad information out there – on all sides.

Short Seller – I’d be willing to bet that that seller was close to being upside-down.

By: Pavel

Pavel — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:03:34 +0000

It seems like for every home that goes under contract, 3 more come on the market that day.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:39:09 +0000

Hi Jim. Not trying to pop the bubble (so to speak), but I would note that the statistics in your post show that *fewer* houses sold in Feb. 2008 than sold in Jan. 2008 *as a percentage of total inventory.* So if anything the direction is continuing down, and I expect things will get worse in the next months as the typical spring inventory influx puts additional pressure on pricing. In any event given this data there isn’t enough difference in the number of sales to attach any statistical significance to the change (i.e., the difference is within the range of a random walk in the data given the number of of houses for sale overall).

Two additional observations: (1) nat’l job growth has now ground to a halt. C’ville to follow? (2) Real interest rates on one-month Treasuries are now close to zero. One-month Treasuries are the instrument the Fed uses to execute monetary policy. Upshot — the Fed is out of bullets, or very close to it.

*Editorial comment — wow the Bush Administration has really scr#$@d things this time.* End editorial comment.

By: michael guthrie

michael guthrie — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:22:16 +0000

Although the numbers don’t lie, I have seen more activity in the last few weeks than I have in the last 6 months. Here’s hoping that by the time you are on WINA, the month of March will show an upward trend vs. what the 1st two months have shown.

By: Short Seller

Short Seller — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:30:37 +0000

Still seems to me that sellers’ expectations have not at all caught up with market realities. In my travels, I’ve seen a lot of “Price Reduced” signs, but after a little investigation you see that the price reduction was actually 5% or less. While I realize that everyone wants to maximize their profits, it doesn’t seem like such a token reduction would do much to generate interest in this kind of market.
In one case I saw, there’s a property that was FSBO for about 3-4 months last year at $399,000, then listed with an agent at $409,000 for another 3-4 months. Now it’s back down to $399,900 and the seller is touting “have equity at closing.” Yeah, right!