From Teri Buhl, who obviously has a strong stomach if she can read this nonsense: Everything is beautiful in New Canaan home sales.
Number of sales, up, average sales price up, median price up, no shadow inventory because foreclosures are down and rentals are booming.
But compared to what? This guy’s own Zillow-supplied charts show the real truth.
And if you want to talk about “absorption rate is falling”, shouldn’t you mention that new listings have fallen by 31%? If I mop up 1/3 of a puddle of spilled milk and then attack the remainder with a Bounty paper towel, I bet the absorption time would also drop considerably. What an insight.
While we’re at it, if that foreclosure rate has dropped off (attributed by everyone except this guy to the shutdown of the process after fraudulent paperwork was disclosed), then how does he explain the great increase in rentals? Like this, which contradicts everything he’s just said:
The rental market has improved. The absorption rate for rentals has dropped from 7.4 months to 4.1 months. That is how long the current inventory of properties would last at the current rate of sales. The number of rentals closed in 2011 increased 16.5 percent to 120 from 103. And, while the average rental price has increased 40 percent to $3,550, the median rental price has increased 162 percent to $4,200. The rental market tells us a good deal about the broader market. The reduction in the rental inventory and higher rental rates is due to the following factors:
- Owners losing their homes due to foreclosure and short sales can only rent.
- Tough lender qualification requirements, causing fewer buyers and more renters.
- Many have lost their equity in real estate and stock market = no down payment to purchase.
- Many have damaged their credit and will not qualify to purchase.
- Many have lost their job and are not able to get a loan.
The
Good for Teri to post a comment on the NC Patch site. She is 100% right here, chiding the Patch that the “guest editor is a realtor and now we have a pr peice under ‘local voices’ as a trend story on local RE with a push for people to buy homes and turn them into rentals.”
Teri only erred in linking YOU as the “only reliable print.” If you thought the Greenwich realtors were angry with you, wait until Ruth Le Blanc Jones pounces. It won’t be pretty.
As a “landlord”, he is probably trying to unload his own crap.
Chris – I laughed when I read the Patch ‘report’ because knew it would take you only about 5 mins to explain the real picture of NC RE.
“This guy’s own Zillow-supplied charts show the real truth.”
Then one real truth is that the average price of a home in New Canaan has stabilized in the last 18 months.
Chris – I knew it would take you only about 5 mins to rewrite that silly Patch story and explain the real news.
EOS- The ‘guest’ editor also doesn’t appear to have any jurno training or background. I don’t know why they are not sued for insulting their readers with pr as news or half baked stories.
The chart I used shows prices headed down again – you have another?
Inagua,
what evidence is there that prices have stabilized?
This story gets even better this am when I read the New Canaan Patch site they listed the guest editor Jane Preziosi at janepreziosi@gmail.com . She’s the RE agent who has been editing the site for a few months now.
http://newcanaan.patch.com/users/jane-preziosi
Now they are listing someone named Paul Devlin – who I’ve seen an opinion writer before.
Prices for all financial assets worldwide (with the possible exception of energy and gold) are headed south. The entire world needs to de-leverage and this will take some time. Baltic Dry Index and Copper prices tend to be the best leading indicators of where the markets are headed and they are heading south. USA real estate has another leg down and NYC/tri-state real estate will have enormous downward pressure on it with the financial services industry on it’s back. These jobs are NOT coming back any time in the near future. There is NO stability in the market. The party is over!
So bitchy. Why the need to name names? Reaks of insecurity…..
“The chart I used shows prices headed down again – you have another?”
No, I just look at more of the chart than you do. I do not consider it statistically significant that the average price has dropped from $1.14 million to $1.12 million in the last three months. I look at the longer term for major points of inflection like the 2006 top of $1.4 million and the 2009 low of $1.07 million. Please note that since the 2009 bottom, the increase has been irregular with two previous drops. Perhaps this third drop that you seem interested in presages another major down leg, but it is also possible that this third drop is a insignifant as the previous two drops.
“Inagua, what evidence is there that prices have stabilized?”
The chart shows a September 1, 2009 bottom of $1.07 million and a subsequent irregular climb to $1.12 million by November 1, 2011. I call that 26 months of relative stability. What do you call it?
Anyone that wears a bow tie and is not a senior citizen must be an authority.
While I don’t put much stock in the statistic, average price in New Canaan ($1,847,000) was, in fact, up 8% from 2010, but that’s simply due to high-end markdowns (builders, or their banks, finally threw in the towel). Values are still in decline, but stabilizing for now.
Residential sales (units) were up a modest 2% from 2010 (214 vs. 210). To put today’s New Canaan market in perspective with pre-crisis levels, the peak in unit sales came in 2004 (350), so we’re still off 39%. Combine this with the decline in average price from the peak ($2,302,000 in 2007) and there are a lot less gross dollars in the marketplace and a lot more hungry brokers. On a positive note, inventory is very low, which tells me that casual sellers are finally wising up to reality.
Btw CF, I too have started scanning the tour sheet carefully to avoid wasting gas dollars on hopelessly overpriced re-treads.
Cheers, Bill Taylor (Brotherhood and Higley)
Uh, I didn’t name names, I just linked to the guy’s site, where his name is displayed. Not my fault. But what’s the big deal? I don’t post anonymously, why should anyone else?
“On a positive note, inventory is very low, which tells me that casual sellers are finally wising up to reality.”
Sir, you have absolutely NO idea what the inventory is! And, you have no idea how many folks (even in New Canaan or Greenwich that are simply not paying their mortgage). Look for loads of shadow inventory to come back on the market as banks decide to puke some of their inventory. And, look for loads of financial types to throw in the towel and head off for greener (and cheaper) pastures. Moving vans will be a common sight in the next couple of years. This was the pause that refreshes before the next leg down. 2008 was a mild event compared to what you should be getting prepared for. Austerity is coming to the Fairfield county ( it simply has to) and the aftershock will not be pretty!
I’m with you, CF. Why indeed, should anyone post anonymously? According to Anonymous @3:01, doing otherwise “reeks of insecurity.”
Note out today-From my fav housing analyst, Mark Hanson, to hedgies looking to trade bank or housing stocks:
“The problem with betting on a recovery theme in housing based on stale, old-era, traditional economic indicators — or being early, too committed to the housing and mortgage sector in large size, or not thinking of them simply as a ‘trades’ — is that this structurally broken housing market is unlike anything we have seen before. Since I first began to panic over US housing — when still in the mortgage business and as an owner of 11 rentals in 2005 — I have spent the last 6 years looking at everything but what economists do and largely being right on the outcome.”
The comment at 3.01 was aimed at the 2.32 poster, not Chris Fountain.
Ah.
Anon-
Thanks for enlightening me. Glad you know what real inventory is, as opposed to an actual number I was referencing.
Actually Delving, most of us are posting anonymously. We may not use that moniker, but I as EOSR am as anonymous as Delving Eye as Inagua as AJ as Cos Cobber. I know no more about you than if you posted as Anonymous, other than you have a link to your name. I feel people are here because they enjoy the crowd, Anonymous or not. Doesn’t bother me at all. As a matter of fact, I venture to guess some of us are multi-monikered when the occasion arises, changing from a known name to an anonymous when “being known” does not suit.
“I feel people are here because they enjoy the crowd…”
The crowd is generally okay, although we suffer somewhat from a total absence of intelligent liberals. The driving force here is Chris — his great news eye, wonderful headlines, great pictures, pitch perfect wit, his fluency, good humor, integrity, and charm. It is a pleasure and delight to read his stuff, and I am very glad to have stumbled upon him.
Dear My rant,
I have NO idea what the real inventory is. That said, neither do you. That was my point. The data points that you are using are not real numbers. IF there is anything that the last 5 years should have taught all of us is that numbers are manipulated all of the time and that when the government is involved in the market: (A) it is a rigged market (B) the market will not clear and find it’s “real” price.
Dear Inagua, the fact that you quote “Zillow” as a source of trusted real estate information just proves to me (and the world) that you are a total moron.
Aw gee, Inagua, thank you, but it’s the commentators who make this fun.
“Dear Inagua, the fact that you quote “Zillow” as a source of trusted real estate information just proves to me (and the world) that you are a total moron.”
I did not cite the Zillow chart; Chris did. He and I disagree over interpretation.
Chris, does the rude poster who uses the screen name Anonymous really make this fun for you? Or do you find this fool as pathetic as I do?
I can’t see any real advantage in using your real name on the Internet unless you’re in the business of selling something, and I can see lots of disadvantages. I wish all you anonymouses would come up with some sort of name for yourselves, though: Sort of like trying to hold a conversation in a room where everyone is named Joe, which, of course, would lead to a situation where everyone’s response to anything said would have to be that Robert DeNiro line: you talkin’ to me?
http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/ntma-warns-house-prices-will-fall-again-in-line-with-income-decline-3001882.html
The Irish get it but Inagua does not. When incomes decline (i.e. the wall street crowd ) homes prices are sure to follow. You should have sold your POS two years ago. Too late now!
Rude Poster – First, congratulations on the new screen name. I hope you stick to it as it fits and helps distinguish among the several Anonymi here. Second, you may or may not be correct about the future of the Greenwich housing market, but I also know that your many predictions of a price decline over the last year have all been wrong. As our gracious hosr recently stated, “Welcome to 2003 pricing — In fact, we’ve been there for the last year or so, but the encouraging news (unless you bought after 2003) is that the Greenwich real estate market seems to be holding steady at that level.”
Has any bubble ever been reinflated?
Collectivism
We may be at 2002/2003 pricing but we are headed to 1997 pricing and may overshoot that. That is when wages and home prices get back into their historical equilibrium.
Indeed Rude Poster the Irish do get it. One of my favorite plays is an Irish piece called “Playboy of the Western World” where there’s two kinds of people in the world: pickers and peelers, and a man who can bash in anothers skull is a man worthy of respect.
http://www.teribuhl.com/2012/02/16/new-canaan-patch-editor-plays-favs-for-rtc-chairman-ohora/
A little more on how AOL Patch sites are the joke of the journalism world
That’s funny. Teri Buhl talking about a joke. All she has to do is look in the mirror. Fact: arrested. Fact: fired from her job at Greenwich Time. Fact: Begs for money from her readers to support her “research”. Do you know what that equals? Exactly.