The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has come out with the August housing numbers. They show a mixed-bag for the U.S. housing market:
U.S. Sales Numbers
U.S. housing sales in August were 5.1 million. This is a drop of 2.7% from the July number of 5.24 million and a drop of 30% from the peak, which was about four years ago. However, this is up 3.4% from this time last year and up 14% from the bottom which was in January.
According to NAR economist Lawrence Yun, a stable housing market cannot be claimed until U.S. home sales increase to about 5.5 to 6 million.
U.S. Median Sales Price
In August 2009, the median price for housing in the U.S. was $177,700. In July 2009, it was $178,400. The August 2009 number is down 12.5% from the August 2008 number.
U.S. Inventory
In August, 3.6 million homes were on the market. This is a decrease from the July number, which was 4 million. According to the NAR, if homes sell at the current pace, it will take 8.5 months to sell these homes. This is the shortest time in two year that analysts have predicted it will take to sell existing housing inventory.
Conclusion
The good news for anyone who wants to sell a house is that inventory is down when compared to last month and sales are up when compared to a year ago.
The bad news for anyone who wants to sell a house is that home sales need to increase substantially if we are to return to a stable market. In addition, housing analysts expected August housing sales to be larger than they were in July; instead, July home sales went down 2.7%.
This month-to-month sale decline has some wondering if we are in for a reverse in that has been an improving market for national housing sales. However, Paul Dales of Capital Economics thinks that this is not the case:
We suspect it is just a temporary blip in the improving trend rather than a sign of renewed weakness.
We’ll see…
Note: See the LA Land blog for additional information and a link to relevant housing charts and graphs.
