Mar 28 2009
Housing Market: Which Direction is it Headed?
While there is no doubt that the housing market is in poor shape, it has improved slightly. As they say, baby steps. An article at Business Week states that “the housing market is in terrible shape, but several reports this week provide some reason for springtime optimism. The Commerce Dept. reported that new-home sales increased by 4.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis in February compared with January. Sales of used homes jumped 5.1% in February compared with the previous month’s seasonally adjusted rate, the National Association of Realtors reported. And the Mortgage Bankers Assn. said mortgage applications surged 32.2% for the week ended Mar. 20 over the previous week (though much of that activity was related to refinancing).” The article goes on to quote Lisa Burns, vice-president at John Burns Real Estate Consulting , as saying “The market conditions have improved, but conditions are still fairly horrible…. Maybe it has moved from an F grade to a D-, but it’s moving in the right direction.” Most students would take a D- over an F but we all have to agree the difference is small. At this stage in real estate, however, small improvements are better than no improvements and if it takes baby steps to get the real estate market to improve let’s hope people start walking soon.
