Weak December single-family home sales capped a weak year, reports AP today.
For the year, sales of single-family homes were down by 13 percent, the biggest drop since a 17.7 percent plunge in 1982. The median price for a single-family home dropped 1.8 percent to $217,000.The National Association of Realtors® adds:
That was the first annual price decline on records going back to 1968. Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ chief economist, said it was likely that the country has not experienced a decline in housing prices for an entire year since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Existing condominium and co-op sales fell 3.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 580,000 units in December from 600,000 in November, and are 24.5 percent below the 768,000-unit pace a year ago. Condo sales for all of 2007 fell 11.0 percent to 713,000 units.
The median existing condo price was $222,200 last month, which is 2.5 percent below December 2006…
Existing-home sales in the Northeast dropped 4.6 percent to an annual rate of 830,000 in December, and are 22.4 percent below a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $258,600, down 8.9 percent from in December 2006.
See also:
Gazette: “State housing slump expected to endure” (1/29/08)
“It is a market that had not yet reached bottom,” said Terry Egan, editor of Banker & Tradesman, a publication of The Warren Group. The Warren Group said single-family home sales totaled 50,435 last year in Massachusetts, down 8.4 percent from 2006. It was the smallest annual total since 1992…
After accelerating in the fall, the rate of decrease picked up in December. The Warren Group reported a 23 percent drop in single-family home sales compared with the same month a year ago. Condo sales fell sharply too – 27 percent, said the Warren Group…
The Warren Group said the state’s median home price fell 4.6 percent last year, to $310,000, with the year’s largest monthly drop coming in December at 10.5 percent…
…the current median is still nearly 24 percent above the 2002 level [according to the Massachusetts Association of Realtors]…
AP: “New Home Sales Dropped in 2007 by a Record Amount; Prices Posted Weakest Showing in 16 Years” (1/28/08)
The Commerce Department reported Monday that sales of new homes dropped by 26.4 percent last year to 774,000. That marked the worst sales year on record, surpassing the old mark of a 23.1 percent plunge in 1980…
While the median home price for the entire year was up slightly, the median price of homes sold in December was $219,200. That was down 10.4 percent from a year ago, the biggest 12-month price drop in 37 years…
It would take 9.6 months to eliminate the backlog of unsold new homes at the December sales pace, the longest stretch of time since the month’s supply stood at 10.3 months in October 1981.
AP: “Construction of New Homes Falls 24.8 Percent in 2007, the Largest Amount in 27 Years” (1/17/08)
The Republican: “House losses soar by 148%” (1/24/08)
Foreclosures in Massachusetts more than doubled last year from 2006, and they also increased sharply in Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties.
The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, reported that foreclosure deeds – whereby the owner loses the property – reached 7,653 in 2007, up by 148 percent from 3,086 a year earlier…
Foreclosure announcements – the first step in the foreclosure process – rose 119.3 percent from 6,659 in 2006 to 14,604 in 2007, the Warren Group said. Last year, they were up 216.1 percent from the 4,620 filed in 2005…
AP: Massachusetts home sales post double-digit decline (12/19/07)
Krugman, NY Times: Home Prices Have Plenty of Room on the Downside (12/14/07)
To restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have to fall about 30 percent from their current levels…