February 1, 2007



Real Estate News - Five-Year Real Estate Trends and Prices

The 2006 numbers have finally been tallied, and it turns out that it was quite a cool year. Overall, real estate prices continued to trend upward, but at a much slower rate than in previous years.

What will 2007 hold? Of course, real estate agents and brokers are nervous. They and the folks in the mortgage industry will be watching Fed rates closely in the coming year. The days of easy refinances and quick sales seem to be gone for now. But those professionals who evolve with this current market, rather than clinging to the 'good old days' of just a couple of years ago will continue to do just fine.

In trying to predict the 2007 real estate market, those in the real estate industry are doing some interesting dances. The National Association of Home Builders reverses themselves in two back-to-back articles. On January 15, 2007, they write the optimistic article "Eye On the Economy: Home Sales May Be Firming Up." Just a week later, they draft an article titled http://www.nahb.org/search.aspx?txtkeyword=average+home+price+2006">"Recent Reports to Fed Show More Cooling in Housing Markets."

The National Association of Realtors is covering themselves in a similar fashion. On January 25, 2007, they lead with the article "Existing-Home Sales Ease, Supplies Tighten." On February 1, they write "Pending Home Sales Index Rises." One can't help but wonder if these conflicting reports are drafted with the idea that one set goes to home sellers and the other to home buyers, as the broker or agent sees fit.
http://www.realtor.org/research/index.html

1 comment:

Alex said...

Hey folks. Sorry about the layout of that table up there. I might have mentioned before that I'm not a technical person, but I'm working to make that much more readable. Sorry for the eyestrain on that one.