Real Estate Outlook: Case-Shiller Index

If you look at the latest Case-Shiller home price index numbers, which showed prices up in seventeen of the twenty markets it tracks and the fourth straight month of gains, you'd have to say: wow, how things have changed!

Even the gloomiest of the major indexes is now documenting month after month that housing not only bottomed out earlier this year, but is steadily racking up price gains.

But hold on, this week's numbers get better than that: According to the National Association of Realtors, resales of existing homes jumped sharply last month, up a very robust 9.4 percent during September.

Sales around the country were 9.2 percent higher than they were during September of 2008 -- pushed this year by first-time home purchasers looking to nail down contracts to qualify for the $8,000 tax credit that's scheduled to end in less than four weeks.

Still more good news: Inventories of unsold homes fell just about everywhere, averaging about an eight month supply in September, down from a 9 month supply in August. A six to seven month supply is considered a balanced market … so we're almost there.

Add in mortgage rates averaging 5 percent for a 30 year fixed mortgage and four and a half percent for a 15 year loan, and you can see why applications for new loans to purchase houses were up by nearly five percent last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's national survey.

And as icing on the cake -- GDP or gross domestic product -- the barometer measuring the nation's overall economic health -- grew by three and a half percent in the third quarter, thereby officially ending the "great recession" we've been suffering through for the past two years.

So absolutely, there's a lot of positive news out there this week.

But not all the news has been good. As we've said here at Realty Times before, the marketplace is complex -- and the arrows usually don't ALL point in one direction.

And that is certainly true this week: New home sales dropped unexpectedly by more than three and a half percent in September. And consumer confidence dropped for the second straight month, according to the Conference Board, mainly because of fears about continuing job losses.

Both of those are troubling developments, no question, and the unemployment situation is obviously a major drag on the economy and housing.

But, as the reports on prices, mortgage rates, GDP and existing home sales show -- there's plenty of action out there, and the housing recovery is well underway -- even if it sputters here and there.

This article was published in Realty Times
Written by: Kenneth R. Harney, November 3, 2009

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