Friday, June 09, 2006
Existing-Home Sales Expected to Fall 6.8% This Year
(June 6, 2006) -- The housing boom has ended but sales at historically healthy levels will continue, and price appreciation will return to normal patterns across much of the country, according to the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
David Lereah, NAR’s chief economist, says home sales are settling into a slower pace. “In recent years we were occasionally challenged to find appropriate superlatives to describe surprisingly high home sales,” he says. “Now the housing market has cooled, but 2006 still expected to be the third strongest on record. In this case, experiencing a slowing from a hot market is a good thing because we need a solid housing sector to provide an underlying base to the economy, and slower appreciation will help to preserve long-term affordability.
"But this is a time for the Fed to pause on rate hikes because we have some interest-sensitive housing markets that have become vulnerable,” Lereah adds.
Existing-home sales are projected to drop 6.8 percent to 6.6 million this year from the record 7.08 million in 2005. New-home sales are forecast to fall 13.4 percent to 1.11 million from a record 1.28 million in 2005. Housing starts are likely to decline 6.2 percent to 1.94 million in 2006 compared with 2.07 million last year.
Read more of the story at: http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf/pages/News2006060601?OpenDocument
David Lereah, NAR’s chief economist, says home sales are settling into a slower pace. “In recent years we were occasionally challenged to find appropriate superlatives to describe surprisingly high home sales,” he says. “Now the housing market has cooled, but 2006 still expected to be the third strongest on record. In this case, experiencing a slowing from a hot market is a good thing because we need a solid housing sector to provide an underlying base to the economy, and slower appreciation will help to preserve long-term affordability.
"But this is a time for the Fed to pause on rate hikes because we have some interest-sensitive housing markets that have become vulnerable,” Lereah adds.
Existing-home sales are projected to drop 6.8 percent to 6.6 million this year from the record 7.08 million in 2005. New-home sales are forecast to fall 13.4 percent to 1.11 million from a record 1.28 million in 2005. Housing starts are likely to decline 6.2 percent to 1.94 million in 2006 compared with 2.07 million last year.
Read more of the story at: http://www.realtor.org/rmodaily.nsf/pages/News2006060601?OpenDocument
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
