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| Existing Single Family Home Sales Up in January |
| Written by Jonathan Smoke | |
| 02.25.2008 | |
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Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts) The National Association of Realtors reported January’s existing home sales today. Chances are you caught the headlines that total sales were down, inventories were up, and median home prices were down year–over-year.  You may not have heard that single family home sales were actually up in January. It turns out that the sale of condominiums fell 6.5% in January, which pulled down the total figure.Inventories were up in terms of total and single family homes, but the inventory of condominiums on the market actually fell. One data point does not a trend make, but it is a hopeful sign that, while year-over-year sales of single family homes are off more than 22%, January broke a five-month streak of month-to-month declines and effectively snapped an 11-month streak of no increase in the sale of single family homes. Inventories jumped by 260,000 single family homes. Could it be that more sellers are optimistic? I doubt you’ll hear that anywhere else. Clearly we have a way to go to trim down inventories, stop the year-over-year declines, and see price stabilization on average nationally. But we need inflection points to do all of the above and this is a start. Economists and Wall Street had expected lower sales numbers, so if we put this in sporting terms, the optimists beat the spread—January was a relatively good start considering where we’ve been for the last two years. On Wednesday the Commerce Department will report on January New Home Sales. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones are expecting a decline of 1.2% over December. I’ll take those points and pull for a sales increase and a decrease in new home inventories. |
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