Understatement: It’s A Bad Time To Sell Your House
October 24, 2007 – 3:42 pmIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Actually, it’s a bad time to sell any house. The real estate market has been in sharp decline, and that sharp decline appears to be heading into a freefall now. And the culprit, as always, is the credit market.
The National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 8 percent in September, the largest decline to show up in records dating to 1999. The seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 5.04 million existing homes was also the slowest pace on record.
The weakness in sales translated into further pressure on prices. The median price — the point at which half the homes sold for more and half for less — fell to $211,700 in September, down by 4.2 percent from the sales price a year ago. It marked the 13th time out of the past 14 months that the year-over-year sales price has decreased.
The 8 percent decline in sales was bigger than the 4.5 percent decline that had been expected.
The numbers get worst, depending on where you live. For folks in the Northeast, sales are down 10%. These are particularly unfortunate times for 1) realtors and 2) people who are forced to sell for whatever reason.
No telling what next month’s numbers will look like.
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