"MLS: Triangle home sales heat up in July"
Across the triangle, more houses sold in
Of course, after the headline, they have basically nothing rosy to report. Sales volume is down double digits YOY in all the counties counted as part of the triangle. Dollar volumes are also down double digits. (Median sales price is down, but median sales price is a worthless metric as the mix of what price ranges are selling is in high flux.) Total sales for the year are down 25% so far.
2 comments:
what's your take on the latest Case-Schiller:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/housing-prices/
I'm gonna agree with CalculatedRisk that Case-Schiller is insufficiently seasonally adjusted (I wish I could give you a link here). The three-month sliding window isn't wide enough to undo the summer bumps; this was clear during the inflation of the bubble too. It's just not surprising that sumer sees a price increase.
Case-Schiller doesn't cover the triangle; in the 20-city poll, they do cover Charlotte. How much does CS describe what's happening here? It seems to me that something slightly different is happening in Chapel Hill; instead of seeing prices drop and volume begin to return, we're seeing prices stay high and volume recede even further. Eventually, people will have to sell and they'll drop their prices, but Chapel Hill's home owners have held out on reducing prices a lot longer than a lot of other places.
Why? Kral thinks it's all the money. People aren't in over their heads -- they've got enough money in the bank -- so they're not in a hurry to sell.
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