Can you take even more good news from the housing market?
I’ve been writing about slumping home sales for so long now, I almost forget how to spell “rose,” as in “home sales rose last month.”
Fortunately, I am now getting reacquainted with that wonderful word. First it was the unexpected news that new housing starts rose in February for the first time in months. Then it was the stock market, which rose sky-high yesterday.
Now it’s the sales of existing homes. At last.
The National Association of Realtors yesterday announced that existing home sales rose in February. Single-family home, condominium and co-op sales rose 5.2 percent in the months. We are now on pace to see 4.72 million housing units sold in 2009. Of course, this being only March, you can bet that figure will change as we move into Spring and Summer.
The question, of course, is will housing sales activity continue to rise? It’s one that no one can really answer.
It seems, though, that the federal first-time homebuyer credit of $8,000 helped spur some of the sales activity in February. According to the National Association of Realtors, first-time homebuyers accounted for half of all homes sales last month. Low mortgage interest rates probably helped, too. The average mortgage interest rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage stood at 5.13 percent in February. That’s up a bit from January, but still a wonderfully low rate.
Housing prices themselves haven’t yet risen. The national median existing-home price for all housing types stood at $165,400 in February. That’s down 15.5 percent from one year earlier when the median was at $195,800.
So, has the housing industry begun its long-awaited recovery? It’s way too early to tell. It’s hard not to get encouraged by these signs of life in the industry. But until we see several months of steady or rising sales, it’s premature to pronounce that hte housing industry is in the middle of a full-blown rebound.
