Home Sweet Home, Insider-Tips on Minnesota real estate.

The best moves for home buyers and sellers

one of the biggest roadblocks to getting a house sold these days is the disconnect between buyers and sellers.

In general, sellers have gotten more realistic in pricing their homes than they were right after the housing bubble burst, but agents say that many still don't grasp how much they must concede to close a deal. And buyers are still spraying lowball offers around in hopes that sellers will be desperate enough to bite.

Go to CNNMoney.com to read the entire article by Beth Braverman.

Home sales plunge 27 pct. to lowest in 15 years

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- With home sales plunging to their lowest level in 15 years, economists warn that a double-dip in housing prices is just around the corner, threatening to further slow the overall recovery.

Existing home sales sank 27.2% in July, twice as much as analysts expected, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of ..... read the entire article by Hibah Yousuf, staff reporter and published in CNNMoney.com

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Low mortgage rates and prices fail to stop home sales from sinking to weakest in 15 years

 By ALAN ZIBEL and J.W. ELPHINSTONE , Associated Press published in the Star Tribune

WASHINGTON - Home prices in many parts of the country scream bargain, and mortgage rates haven't been this low for decades. So why are houses across the nation sitting on the market for so long?

Potential buyers are hesitating because they think home prices still have further to fall. Potential sellers — those with the stomach to put their homes on the market at all, anyway — are reluctant to lower their prices.

HousingWire.com

Predictions that home prices may drop into double digits continue to drag down sales. Bill Gross, managing director of the world's biggest bond fund, PIMCO remarked that the idea of a rebound anytime soon is "ludicrous."

NAR July Existing Homes Sales Fall 27.2%

U.S. Existing Home Sales in Record Plunge

  published in BloombergNews.com

Drop in Home Sales Renews Pricing Fears

U.S. home sales plummeted in July as potential buyers stayed on the sidelines, spurring fears of renewed weakness in housing prices and the broader economy.

Existing-home sales declined 27% in July, spurring fears of renewed weakness in housing prices and the broader economy.

Sales of Existing Single-Family Homes Plunge to 1995 Level

published in eCreditDaily.com

Home sales plunge 27 pct. to lowest in 15 years

By ALAN ZIBEL

Sales of previously occupied homes plunged last month to the lowest level in 15 years, despite the lowest mortgage rates in decades and bargain prices in many areas.

July's sales fell by more than 27 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. It was the largest monthly drop on records dating back to 1968, and sharp declines were recorded in all regions of the country.

The plunge in home sales also magnified fears about the broader economy.

How is that 'change' Obama promised working out for you?

The Monthly Skinny August

View the August video of the 'Monthly Skinny' from the Minneapolis Assoication of Realtors

Homebuyer Demand All But a 'Standstill'

After the tax credit induced "mini-boom" in the spring, home prices should remained pressured through the end of the year, according to the real estate data provider Altos Research.

While demand is dropping, supply is going up, according to Altos.

To read the full article click the link, Homebuyer Demand all But a 'Standstill' by JON PRIOR published in HousingWire.com 

Mpls. home sellers cutting prices

With pending home sales down sharply in July, sellers in Minneapolis are offering price reductions more often than in any other U.S. city. With sales down, the inventory of houses on the market is growing.

A picture of the post-tax-credit housing market is emerging, and it isn't pretty.

Reports released Wednesday showed pending home sales in the Twin Cities down, the inventory of houses on the market growing and sellers in Minneapolis offering price reductions more often than in any other U.S. city/

Read the full article By JIM BUCHTA, Star Tribune

Pending Sales of Existing U.S. Homes Decrease 2.6%

The number of contracts to purchase previously owned houses unexpectedly fell in June, indicating demand kept unraveling after the expiration of a homebuyer tax credit.

The index of pending home resales dropped 2.6 percent from the prior month, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 4 percent gain, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The expiration of a government tax credit on April 30 caused the gauge to slump 30 percent in May, the most since data began in 2001.

Read the full story by By Courtney Schlisserman published in the Wall Street Journal

Housing: Right Back Where We Started?

By Robbie Whelan

With all the gloom and doom in the present conversation about the national housing market, you’d think we were recovering from a complete financial meltdown instead of the expiration of the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit.

Funny coincidence about that—these days, it seems like everyone, from the analysts to the big builders, is talking about how July 2010 looks a whole lot like April 2009, when the market was just emerging from the darkest days of the financial meltdown.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal

U.S. housing starts drop to 8-month low

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Ground-breaking on new housing units fell sharply after a federal tax credit for buyers expired, putting the housing sector back in the dumps where it was a year ago, according to Commerce Department data released Tuesday.

After a 15% drop in May, housing starts fell another 5% in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 549,000, the lowest level in eight months, the Commerce Department estimated.

The decline was larger than the 3% decline to 575,000 starts that economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected. The government's estimate of starts for May was revised to 578,000, down from the 593,000 originally reported.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal MarketWatch

Similar articles appear in:

• CalculatedRiskBlog.com
• Forbes.com Home construction sinks to lowest level since Oct
• HousingWire.com
• eCredit.com

Housing Supply Outlook – July 2010

The single-family detached market is showing signs of moving back in the buyer's favor, with supply increasing and demand decreasing. The inventory of active single-family homes is now 19,722, up 8.4 percent from a year ago, and the number of pending sales over the last twelve months has declined by 0.7 percent. As a result, this segment is the only property type showing an increase in Months Supply from a year ago.

Since the expiration of the tax credit, home sales have particularly slowed in the lower price ranges—a segment that up until recently had been showing very strong demand. Home sales under $120,000 (the lowest price range we track) are down 3.7 percent over the last 12 months. Inventory is up in that price range by 25.5 percent.

Home builders have been making larger price concessions in recent months to spur sales. The Price Per Square Foot (PPSF) of new construction homes has declined by 11.5 percent in the past 12 months, while previously owned homes have seen their PPSF hold relatively steady.

Weekly Market Activity Report

As the summer progresses, the Twin Cities housing market continues a remarkably similar week-to-week pattern —tepid new listings, extremely weak buyer demand and a total supply of available homes that slowly increases.

New listings for the week ending July 3 were 5.6 percent below last year, but the drop in pending sales was much more dramatic. The 611 signed agreements for the week ending July 3rd represented a 38.2 percent drop from last year’s figures. Because the decline in demand is stronger than the decline in supply, the number of total active listings is up 3.8 percent from a year ago.

On the upside, Days on Market until Sale has dropped considerably over the last year. At 121 days in June this is 14 percent below the 140 days it took to sell a house last year. Percent of Original List Price has also increased, in related news. However, these metrics tend to lag a few months behind the true supply-demand picture, so it is unlikely that these positive trends will

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