So this is the housing bottom that Jim Cramer is talking about?
You know you have a problem when the NAR numbers for home value declines start to approach the Case-Shiller numbers.
The NAR announced yesterday that the median home price fell -16.8% year over year. The fastest rate of decline that they have published. In other words, home value declines are accelerating, not slowing down as you would expect to see if the housing market were actually in a bottoming process.
And yes, while I know all real estate is local, home values were down -12.5% in the Northeast, -10.4% in the Midwest, -9.9% in the South, and -30.6% in the West. And what is more, 90% of local markets lost value year over year during the 1Q of '08 to the 1Q of '09 and 44 out of 50 sates showed home sale declines during that same period of time.
Here is what the year over year percentage change in the median home value has looked like over the past several months according to the NAR:
Jun 2008: -6.1%
Jul 2008: -7.1%
Aug 2008: -9.5%
Sep 2008: -9.0%
Oct 2008: -11.3%
Nov 2008: -13.2%
Dec 2008: -15.3%
Jan 2009: -14.8%
Feb 2009: -15.5%
Mar 2009: -12.4%
Apr 2009: -15.4%
May 2009: -16.8%
And what is worse is that based on the current month's supply of housing which stands at a 9.6 month supply, as well as the next tsunami of foreclosures that will be making land-fall in the next six to nine months, home values will continue to fall for the next two to three years based on the supply and demand imbalance unless a real housing stimulus plan is passed.
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