12 comments

  1. longerwalk

    Gosh, I like to see those lines going up. Wish we really knew how much of it was due to the new homebuyers credit, though. While doing income tax prep for lower income folks this past season, seemed a lot were taking advantage of this credit, and we saw many more home purchases than I recall for several years.

  2. skeptical

    new homes sales down.
    resales down.

    All during “high” season.

    Let’s hear it from the usual suspects how stable and risk-free the housing market is. Let’s hear about how now is a great time to buy a house.

  3. smarten

    skeptical –

    1. When is the last time you saw a new home start?

    2. Has any of this standing inventory [for new homes] sold since then?

    3. Is there now more or less standing inventory [for new homes] than when you answered #1?

    4. So where’s the surprise that new home sales are down?

    5. Are there now more, less or the same number of new home starts than your answer for #1?

    No one is saying how “stable” and “risk-free the housing market is.” However, the new homes sales data to which you refer doesn’t really buttress your case. Sorry.

    Insofar as resales being “down,” at least in Reno/Sparks, have you gotten an advance peek at Guy’s numbers for June?

  4. longerwalk

    Lennar & Ryder are putting up new homes in NW Reno at a modest pace. It doesn’t seem quite right when the new-within-4-years houses just down the street are short-selling and foreclosing, though. Too many burned lawns.

  5. Irv

    L-Walk, I think the developers need to keep their teams working if they possibly can, and if they already have land, and permitted product to produce at a close-to-market price, that is a good course of action for them. Otherwise, they would have their crews standing around idle, and soon lose their internal structure and key superintendant type employees.

    In hard times, we have been known to take on some less-than-desireable business, just to keep the team busy and in place. You have to do things like that sometimes–remember the movie line, “This is the business we have chosen.”

  6. longerwalk

    Irv-Your comments are quite understandable and reasonable. I can’t be happy, though, about vacant houses in the neighborhood and increasing inventory . . . this is not good for the area, the city, the tax base.

  7. MikeZ

    [skeptical] new homes sales down. resales down.

    I can’t understand why you insist on quoting loosely correlated metrics like sale/resale volume to address the stability of home prices when the actual price metrics are available.

    (No insult intended) For quite some time I thought you were a very smart guy, skeptical, but now I’m not so sure.

  8. longerwalk

    Just because the sale numbers, price per square foot, inventory, etc. have been used for years to evaluate the market does not mean those statistics hold for all economic conditions. These stats, however interesting, may be only loosely correlated with what’s really happening–may just happen to coexist, or may be strongly correlated. I, for one, am leery of that, since I see no one (at least here) doing any validation work. Seems we are all just using current stats (what we have) to justify our perceptions. I’d love to see a real statistician have a go at them, esp. to evaluate their predictive ability. (No doubt someone is doing this in a university somewhere . . . )

  9. smarten

    Longerwalk –

    If unit sales numbers, median sales price, P/SF, outstanding listings, DOM, etc. do not apply to today’s marketplace, then exactly what barometers do?

    Ever since Guy/Diane began publishing their monthly data to help evaluate the marketplace, they have used some/all of the above pieces of data. When some of us compare the state of the market to the somewhat recent past, we point to these data sets. When others deviate, they generally degenerate into litmus tests like: “I have this sense;” or, “the strata of the market I’m following still has a long way to go;” or, “I’ll know it, when I see it;” or, “the state of the economy as a whole;” or, “the average household income for Reno/Sparks;” or, “real unemployment;” or, etc., etc.

    If we can’t all speak the same language, then it makes communication challenging. I’m all for using any relevant measuring stick you/others suggest. It’s just I doubt we’ll reach unanimity which then leaves us with what? I disagree with you that some of us are using unit sales numbers, median sales price, P/SF, outstanding listings, DOM, etc., to “justify our perceptions.” We’re using them because since that’s what has been used in the past, we’re trying to compare apples-to-apples.

    Nevertheless I’m interested in hearing whatever other data you feel should be relied upon by “a real statistician.”

  10. MikeZ

    [longerwalk] Seems we are all just using current stats (what we have) to justify our perceptions.

    Not all of us.

    Certainly some of us are, those who simply refuse the believe the data, or try to explain it away, month after month (for a year now!) while others are using the available data to SET their perceptions.

    As a potential home buyer who can wait until next year, or the year after, I do not particularly want market prices to be or remain stable, I simply note that prices ARE stable, and have been now for a full year.

  11. longerwalk

    I don’t believe I accused anyone in particular of cherry-picking the data. I’m not a diligent student of the real estate market; I am a skeptic regarding data and it’s uses in many guises, whether government, commercial or personal. I intended to invite a person with true statistical skills and knowledge to do some validation work. I’d be happy if someone merely pointed me in that direction. We spend a lot of time talking about the numbers we have, but what drives those numbers? Like ‘leading’ or ‘lagging’ economic indicators, are we looking at the skid marks or the tachometer? The ocean is pretty much the same level all the time, but there’s a heck of a lot of churn underneath . . .

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