Steamboat Homes

The National Association of Realtors released information today that many headlines have spun negatively. The Financial Times headlines, ‘Record December Drop for US Home Resales’ and Business Week states ‘Existing Home Sales Decline More than Forecast.’

However, much of this decline has been attributed to the original date that the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit was intended to expire. Before President Obama and Congress extended the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit it was scheduled to conclude at the end of last November. ‘First-time buyers rushed to complete deals before the $8,000 government incentive was due to end, pushing sales up 28 percent in the three months to November.’ As a result, ‘analysts were expecting a decline in sales last month as demand was ‘pulled back’ by the rush to take advantage of the incentive.’

This analysis that First Time Homebuyers sudden decrease in home purchases is at the root of the problem appears to be correct when seeing that ‘the share of homes sold to first-time buyers fell to 43 percent in December from 51 percent the prior month

This past December does however, mark an overall increase of home sales by 15% from December ’08. In addition, the Financial Times illustrates that ‘prices also rose on the year, gaining 1.5 per cent to $178,300. That was the first year-on-year gain and was fuelled by a bigger proportion of high-priced homes being sold.’  ‘The increase was the first since August 2007 and the biggest since May 2006.’

So while many headlines initially appear negative, the overall direction of the market appears to be heading in the right direction.

Related posts:

1. Vacation Home Sales Rise in 2009
2. First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit Date Approaching
3. Luxury Home Tour Today in Steamboat

This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 12:40 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.