Home Sales Drop in December 2009
February 2, 2010
Even though November 2009 reported home sales being up over 7%. Existing home sales fell 16.7% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million units from 6.54 million units in November. The drop was largely due to the anticipated expiration of a tax incentive for first-time homebuyers, which has since been extended and expanded. The inventory of unsold homes on the market fell 7% to 3.3 million, a 7.2-month supply at the current sales pace.
A decline of around 10% was the industry consensus.
Here’s the full announcement from the National Association of Realtors
The Commerce Department announced that gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services produced in the U.S. — increased at an annual rate of 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009. It was the second consecutive quarter of growth and the fastest pace since the third quarter of 2003.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city housing price index rose a seasonally adjusted 0.2% in November. It was the sixth consecutive monthly gain and follows a 0.4% increase in October. On a year-over-year basis, the gauge was down 5.3% from November 2008.
The consumer confidence index rose to 55.9 in January from an upwardly revised 53.6 in December. The index was bench marked at 100 in 1985, a year chosen because it was neither a peak nor a trough in consumer confidence.
Orders for durable goods — items expected to last three or more years — rose 0.3% in December after a 0.2% increase in November. Excluding volatile transportation-related goods, orders posted a monthly gain of 0.9%.
New home sales fell 7.6% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 342,000 units from an upwardly revised rate of 370,000 units in November.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 8,000 to 470,000 in the week ending January 23. Continuing claims for the week ending January 16 fell by 57,000 to 4.6 million.
Upcoming on the economic calendar are reports on construction spending on February 1, pending home sales on February 2 and factory orders on February 4.
For more information regarding Tulsa news, articles and commentary on homes sales, farms and commercial property in the Tulsa Real Estate market please re-visit or subscribe to our RSS Feed on our Tulsa Real Estate Mall Blog.
4 Comments to Home Sales Drop in December 2009
Comments
Agreed but December is traditionally a slow month for us. Hope fully there is nothing here for us to get too depressed about!
Moriara, I agree January and December are always slow. With our renewed tax incentive we are in hopes that this years market will be much better than in the past year or so. We have started to see some turn in the market as one of our agents went to show a property this past weekend and even though it had only been on the market for 24 hours about 35 people showed up to see the property.
How is the current economy and real estate market in Spain?
Oh, by the way thanks for stopping in and please feel free to chime in as often as you like.
Hi thanks for getting back to me. Glad to see the interest in the property you mention above. Long may it continue.
The Spanish market has been difficult for some time. The Spanish economy has huge economic challenges as it was heavily dependent upon property. The fall off new build has lead to a massive rise in unemployment. Jobless figures are approaching 20% in Spain which is a staggering figure. There are also serious doubts about Spain’s’ sovereign debt which along with Greece, Ireland and Portugal is desatbalising the Euro.
We sell mainly to Brits looking for a home in the sun. (We British get crap weather!). This has been difficult but is improving as the UL market improves and Spanish property prices fall.
I could go on and on here but I today read a summary of the Spanish Market. It is rather lengthy but I hope you won’t’ mind me posting it here as it does, I think provide a balanced and thorough current view. Good luck for 2010 – thanks for your warm replay I will be back from time to time!
Spain Seeing Some Bright News But Long Windy Road Ahead
05 February 2010 @ 08:38
Hopes have emerged that the battered Spanish property market could be hitting something that feels like a floor. Pardon the vague language, but with 1 million homes still on the market to say the future is torrid for Spanish property is an understatement despite the latest positive data.
The most positive aspect of the latest data to be released shows that home sales transactions rose 5.3% between October and November last year, leaving them down just 2.6% year on year, compared to 21% in October and 17% in September.
On top of that Spanish house prices were down just 6.2% on the year ending the 4th quarter, compared to a fall of 7.8% in the third quarter, and 8.2% in the second quarter. However, this is according to the governmental housing ministry index, which is based on the valuations of surveyors. It says house prices have fallen 9.5% since the peak in the first quarter of 2008, whereas other industry bodies say prices have fallen 20%-30% in the past 2 years.
This is all very positive, especially the monthly increase in sales, which is badly needed if Spain is to start clearing the 100s of thousands of empty apartments and villas left from the construction boom. A boom that saw Spain building more properties than, France the UK and Germany put together at its height.
The devastation of the housing market from a catastrophic drop in demand has led to the devastation of the Spanish economy, because of the complete freeze in the building industry. Thousands of jobs have been lost and the economy continued contracting in the third quarter, 2 quarters after its main rivals Italy and Germany returned to positive growth.
On the brighter side, we are once again coming into the hot season for overseas property demand, and Spain is still very much a favourite with British and Irish buyers. According to the top 10 for 2009 recently released by the Property Abroad.com portal, Spain was the most popular country with those browsing and searching for property on the site.
The portal said that Spain, always a favourite with its user base had been knocked into second place since May, when America overtook it. None the less, its holding second place since saw it bring sufficient traffic and search volumes to make Spain most popular for 2009 as a whole.
February is traditionally a very good month for overseas property sales, and this continues throughout the till November. Given that demand for overseas property began increasing in the second quarter of 2009, 2010 could see sales increasing massively in Spain’s less overdeveloped areas.
Moraira, I totally understand as we have had a really crappy winter here as well. British huh (love the Brits) I used to represent several British tool companies years ago. Clarkson, Walker just to name a few. During my only trip to England I had the pleasure of making it over to the Isle of Man what a beautiful piece of paradise. But nothing like Spain I sure wish I had the extra resources to invest as I love Spain and the culture.
We are experiencing some high unemployment here as well but ours is not near as bad as your standing at 20% ours is only at around 10% or at least that is what they tell us. The really sad part is our current administration has absolutely no clue of what it takes to get us back on track. What is your normal unemployment?
Wishing you a hot sales season and a speedy recovery of your economy.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks