Home Sales News: 15 Months and Counting!
Lately
you may have noticed that it has become more of a pleasure to open the
newspaper when you are checking up on real estate news. In addition to the
Internet news feeds, I do still subscribe to some of the old-fashioned kind,
too: the ones printed on actual paper (so you can tear interesting articles out
and carry them around rather than just Ctrl+C
and Ctrl+Ving them).
Given the definite possibility that
paper papers won’t be around much longer, I enjoy them while I still can. The
Wall Street Journal is one. I opened it up on Saturday
to find a headline at the top of the
second page that got my attention: “Home Sales Rise For 15th Month,”
it fairly screamed.
If you are a frequent visitor here, you
know that I follow and comment on home sales and associated topics regularly --
but even I hadn’t realized that the trend has been going for such a long
time. I took a look at the charts, and it is so!
Others noted the mark, too. The NY
Times seems in a permanently grouchy mood of late, so it had a less
ebullient take on the statistics (which originated with the NAR). But even they
were forced to note that higher prices have become the rule rather than the
exception. “The nation’s stock of existing homes for sale fell 3.3% last
month…tight inventories have helped support home prices…,” the Grey Lady
mumbled.
The Journal was more cheerful in
approaching the latest numbers. “The markets need inventory right now,” they
quoted the president of a leading appraisal firm. “The pent-up demand is
enormous.”
You certainly can appreciate
observations like that – especially if you are a homeowner who is keeping an
eye on home sales since you might list soon. If you fall into that category, I
hope you will check in with me to get a more precise readout of the Utah home sales market, and what you might expect
from this fall’s selling
season. The Journal says, “…there are signs that demand could be picking
up.” Since they also noted that national median home prices rose 11.3% from a
year ago, you would have to say that’s a pretty safe assumption.
