A bit of good news in a gloomy housing market
Anyone who follows the housing industry, or who’ s trying to sell a home, knows that good news is hard to come by these days. Homes are sitting on the market for months. Sellers are dropping prices. Foreclosures are up. No one, it seems, is making money these days in the home-selling business.
But just when it all looks hopeless, there is one bit of good news: The sales of existing homes experienced a surprising gain in December. You can read all about it at the Web home of the National Association of Realtors.
Of course, the news isn’t entirely good. Is it ever these days? Yes, sales of existing homes, which includes condominiums, single-family homes and co-ops, did rise in December. But sales were still lower this December than they were one year earlier.
Still, you take your good news where you can get it, right?
Existing-home sales rose 6.5 percent in December when compared to November. Unfortunately, sales were down 3.5 percent from December of 2007.
The numbers contained some more bad news for anyone hoping to sell a home. The national media existing-home price for all housing types came in at $175,400 in December. That’s 15.3 percent below the numbers of December 2007. Back then, the median stood at a far higher $207,000.
I have mixed feelings about this. My wife and I were unfortunate enough to have been in the market for a new home when the housing boom was at its peak. So we now own a home that’s not worth as much as we paid for it. However, I’m glad that the median housing price has fallen. It seemed to me that housing prices were getting too high too quickly. It was getting to the point where you had to be independently wealthy to afford a home in some of the nation’s top markets.
It makes more sense for the country to have housing be a little less expensive. After all, when housing gets too costly, who’s going to be able to buy it?
