DISQUS

Fielding Mellish · 11 months ago

Are you saying that there were 66% more closed sales in Orange Cty in Nov 2008 than there were in 2007? How about average sale price? What has happened to home values for a given home type? "More sales" might appear to indicate a bottoming, but it might not be a real bottoming: Where I am, I'm seeing foreclosed properties being listed for sale @ 30% of their last sale price (albeit with the last sale seeming to have involved shameless fraud). More importantly, I see some list prices for 2-4 unit properties at approximately half of the value one would impute using decades-old methods of rent-multipliers, etc... In other words, at a certain point, banks are just giving properties away and that will bring out some buyers. I'm not sure that means that home values are bottoming, though.

chynes · 11 months ago

of course it doesn't indicate a bottom. that's the point of the piece, that the federal government is creating artificial demand by lowering mortgage rates. if it is a bottom (which i doubt) it's a false, temporary bottom, which ultimately could have the effect of undoing the purging of excess from the marketplace.

Tolstoy's Ghost · 11 months ago

Dead cat bouncing? Fools rush in where wise men dare not tread.

Ditech Home Loans · 11 months ago

Lower mortgage rates play only a small part in the recovery process. Housing prices will have to drop according to market demand, which is driven by qualified borrowers. Unqualified homeowners and the lenders that funded their mortgages will eventually be replaced to create a more stable market.