We've been warning to expect a post-tax-credit swoon ever since the credits expired on April 30. We've been mostly right, though we didn't expect the swoon to dip so unnervingly low.
As we'...
Housing was the lead story for most of last week. Unfortunately, what was reported wasn't particularly encouraging. For instance, homebuilders turned even more pessimistic in July, as...
Foreclosures were the leading story this past week – leading because they were alarming. RealtyTrac (which is quickly morphing into the “Debbie Downer” of housing data...
The housing market is playing out close to what we had anticipated post-April 30, so we weren't surprised to hear that existing-home sales slipped in May, posting a 2.2 percent drop to an...
Some people are just unsure of where they're going. We'll slot homebuilders into this category. After posting steady gains over the past few months, the National Association of Homebuilders/...
Few housing market participants were surprised when the NAR reported that its pending home sales index increased again, 6 percent in April, to 110.9 (100 is the base set in 2001) thanks to a...
Is news really news if it had already been anticipated? We're referring to April's housing numbers, which everyone anticipated and which surprised few. Existing home sales rose 7.6 percent...
A popular investing aphorism states that markets must climb a wall of worry in order to advance. If anyone has had more worries than most in recent years, it's the homebuilders. Over the past...
The pig is progressing through the python – the pig being the shadow inventory of foreclosures, the python being the market. According to Barclays Capital, there are currently 2.4...
In news that surprised no one, the pending home sales index surged to 102.9 in March. We all expected the months heading into April would produce more home sales, and that's the way it's...
The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index is promoted as the leading indicator of the national trend in home prices, but we wonder if its worth is overstated – given that it tends to...
In another sign home prices are stabilizing, Trulia.com reports that the rate of home listings where the seller made at least one reduction in asking price declined 26% in April 2010 compared...
When is “bad news” actually good news? When it's not as bad as the consensus thought it would be. Sales of existing homes fell a third-consecutive month to a 5.02-million annual...
It appears the trend is no longer our friend, at least when looking at recent data on new and existing home sales.
New-home sales, in particular, have had a rough go of it, though not as...
There is something about the calendar flip from December 31 to January 1 that imbues a “clean slate and a new start” mentality. For some ingrained psychological reason, a new year...
