初步细分周五房市数据

sendmore11

Existing home sales one part of a strong Friday data day.

Existing home sale rose 7% from June to July, and that was the largest gain in 2 years and marked the fourth straight month of gains. Finally some good news in the housing market.

Good news but look at the mix and you see what is driving the market. Most of the sales, over 30%, came from units priced at less than $100K. The next biggest segment was $100K to $200K. After that activity fell off rapidly. $250K to $500K was still down, and when you get to the higher prices it really tanked. $1M to $2M fell 23% while houses priced over $2M fell 32%. The $1M to $5M range was the fastest growing during the boom as many branched out into bigger homes and second houses in luxury resort areas. Those prices are really struggling as the second house market is very weak. Even primary dwellings in the high end are struggling. Hugh Hefner sold his house adjacent to the Playboy Mansion recently, but he got nowhere near his asking price; it went for $18M versus the $28M he wanted. Even Hugh had a hard time getting it up, price-wise at least.

The point: with the low priced units by far dominating the existing home sales market there are two conclusions. First, the first-time home buyers credit is the driving force right now. Prices are very low as most sales are still buys out of foreclosure properties. Lower prices combined with the first-time credit are motivating buyers, particularly as the credit is set to expire. That is moving them off the fence even though many still anticipate further housing price declines over the next few quarters. They buy now and risk some more downside versus losing out on the credit.

Second, the remainder of the housing market is still a long way from price recovery. Thousands upon thousands of new homes were built during the last boom to fill the desire for second luxury homes as well as big primary residences. Those are late cycle homes, very much discretionary versus early cycle need-based purchases (more of what we are seeing now). That means those markets are going to remain weak as long as the economic cycle is anemic. Thus we can see economic improvement, but without the kind of seriously strong economic growth that fuels new jobs and thus new big salaries, the high end of the market is going to languish. Not the very high end; the ultra-wealthy will have the means and thus that very tip end of the market will recover faster. It is the bulk of the higher end that will struggle.

dlaodou

weigoodone01

JL01

Thanks a lot.

windflower

Thanks for good analysis

bz24244

thx

NingCaiChen

thanks

Alchemist

zhishun

still a long way to recover, it is not news, because everybody knows that and everybody is talking about it.
The news is, no more drop and the bottom is almost confirmed............ This is the point.

nomisy

hi-liter

still a long way to recover, it is not news, because everybody knows that and everybody is talking about it.
The news is, no more drop and the bottom is almost confirmed............ This is the point ...
zhishun 发表于 2009-8-23 13:25

agree.

penguin

michaelzhang

thanks

毛点点

Thanks for good analysis

sendmore11

still a long way to recover, it is not news, because everybody knows that and everybody is talking about it.
The news is, no more drop and the bottom is almost confirmed............ This is the point ...
zhishun 发表于 2009-8-23 13:25

Neither is news.  But what do government and media want main street  to believe?

nasd

15# sendmore11

exactly

abaqus

Thanks for good analysis

coexist

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