Dec 10 2007
Housing Market on the Rebound? Does a .6% Increase Count?
In an article by the National Association of Realtors, although slightly biased, they announced the following on December 10, 2007:
“The National Association of Realtors’ index of pending home sales climbed 0.6%, the second month in a row the number has increased. The latest figure, which measures contracts signed in October, was ahead of economists’ forecasts of a 1.0% fall. September’s reading was revised up to a 1.4% increase as well. “We’re not likely to see any further collapse at this point,” said Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City Corp, who had actually fore-casted a gain. “I’m not optimistic about the outlook for the housing market, but we’re scraping bottom in the fourth
quarter.” On a year-to-year basis, the NAR index dropped 18.4%. Two out of four the regions, the Northeast and the West, in the index showed an increase since last month in pending sales. The NAR held its forecast for the number of homes sold in the U.S. steady at 5.67 for 2007, but increased its 2008 forecast to 5.7 million from 5.69 million. ” - http://seekingalpha.com/article/56817-pending-home-sales-climbs-for-2nd-straight-month Article was sited by Roy Mehta of Seeking Alpha online blog.
This is probably good news for people looking to sell their homes, and better news for the mortgage broker and lender markets. I would assume there will be more announcements following this one if this information holds true. I can imagine what this would mean for those people holding out on foreclosing their homes in hopes of selling. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a strong and long winded turn around for the market.