New Jersey Real Estate Report

This is the time and place to post observations about your local areas, comments on news stories or the New Jersey housing bubble, open house reports, etc. If you have any questions you wanted to ask earlier in the week but never posted them up, let’s have them. Also a good place to post suggestions, requests for information, criticism, and praise.

For readers that have never commented, there is a link at the top of each message that is typically labelled “[#] Comments“. Go ahead and give that a click, you might be missing out on a world of information you didn’t know about. While you are there, introduce yourselves to everyone.

For new readers that have only read the messages displayed on the main page, take a look through the archives, a substantial amount of information has been put online in the past year. The archives can be accessed by using the links found in the menus on the right hand side of the page.

This post will remain at the top of the page during the weekend, any new posts will be displayed below.

Some suggestions for discussion:

1. 2007 Predictions - Let’s hear them!

2. The following post written by Clotpoll.

Although our friend writes with the subtlety of a flying mallet, he’s probably one of many recent homebuyers who has realized that- despite the nonstop predictions of disaster around here- the sun keeps coming up every morning.

He is also dead-on in his assessment of the plethora of arbitrage and relentless minutiae-crunching within many threads here. It’s like a pack of vultures picking at a dead rabbit…not much meat there. And what a way to assess owner-occupied RE! Call me stuck in the ’50s, but I contend “home” is supposed to be about family, comfort and good times. The market goes sour? Stay in your home thru the down cycle. Nobody just wakes up one day and suddenly realizes NJ is expensive. And, even though there are thousands of the proverbial “500K POS Capes” out there, there are affordable, nice places to live all over NJ…if one is willing to compromise just a tad. RE is a game of compromise, because not even millionaires can “have it all”…there’s always a tradeoff among the three factors of price, location and amenities of homes buyers consider (I contend the best anyone can do is get 2 out of 3 of those factors…the third factor will be out of the buyer’s control and must be accepted). No matter how bad things get in NJ, a 450K 4 BR Colonial in a top school district on the Midtown Direct line ain’t in the cards. Sorry; location DOES matter.

I have tried to grasp the merit in the idea of renting, hoarding cash and waiting for the big market crash in order to swoop in and obtain maximum value. However, I can’t help but think that the element of putting your life on hold that this strategy requires also has significant costs. Renting- in and of itself- implies transience, impermanence and absence of commitment (please don’t read this as an accusation of renters being shiftless drones who have 400 FICO scores, leased Escalades and closets full of $300 jeans). You can be in a beautiful place…great landlord…below-market rent…but you are essentially “on hold”.

And on hold for what? It seems that for many here, the only x-factor left is when to call the bottom of the market. All but the blind agree it’s down; the only question is how much further it will fall. 5%? 10%? 20%? Is the benefit of catching the absolute bottom worth the wait and uncertainty? And, what if the bottom is in…and you’re missing it now? Are you so invested in the “big crash” theory that you can’t pull the trigger in a rising tide?

Cost/benefit analysis requires an evenhanded assessment of both sides of a proposition. I, for one, see a lot of attention here to the cost side…while the benefit side of the ledger gets lip service (or worse). This blog doesn’t get the attention that comes its way because homeownership isn’t highly desired and valuable.

From the Record:

Financing incentives help seal the deal

Developer Pulte Homes is hoping to eliminate the home-selling obstacle facing buyers of its active adult village under construction in Wanaque.

After watching its 55-and-older buyers struggle to sell their homes in today’s slumping housing market, the builder joined the incentive package fray in November with a multi-phase program to help sell their homes.
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“They can’t buy a home from us until they sell their existing home, so it’s a win for us and a win for them,” said Robert Teeling, sales manager for Wanaque Reserve by Del Webb. “We’ve definitely felt the effects of the market.”

For customers who have signed a contract to buy a unit, Pulte will pay for a home-staging company that suggests ways to prepare their homes for a quick sale. That might include new carpeting, painting or nothing more than removing clutter, said Teeling.

“Our buyers need to make that mental transition from home to commodity … and that’s hard,” he said.

If none of that works, then contracted buyers are offered “creative” mortgage deals.

The payment-free living program will pay up to six months of interest on a bridge loan and the $363 monthly fee covering maintenance, the staffed guardhouse, sewer and water fees and the activities director. It requires a 10 percent down payment and is the most popular of the two programs, said Teeling.

The second program requires a 25 percent down payment, but for that Pulte will pick up mortgage and interest payments for up to a year. Buyers can pay cash for either program, but a mortgage must be obtained through Pulte’s mortgage company, which offers competitive rates, said Teeling.
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Builders across the state have been using a variety of incentives for about a year now to move unsold homes, said Patrick O’Keefe, CEO of the New Jersey Home Builders Association.

“The incentive is there because there are units in the pipeline that the builder wants to make a deal and move off the books,” said O’Keefe.

He advised prospective buyers to make sure they can afford long-term payments while their homes are taking longer to sell.

“If I were a buyer, I would still go back to basics: Can I afford the house? Am I getting a mortgage that will make sense for time I’m occupying the house?” said O’Keefe.
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The state’s largest developer, K. Hovnanian in Red Bank, prefers enticing potential buyers with free popular upgrades, such as a $6,000 granite kitchen counters in a newer Montvale development.

“We’ve always done incentives and premiums,” said Hovnanian spokesman Doug Fenichel. “It’s just maybe these incentives are a little more pronounced now.” Mortgage incentive plans are also offered.

But in response to the market, Hovnanian has held back finishing buildings. It has also backed off buying land in West Milford, Mount Olive and Hackettstown where it would take too long to get a return on high land prices and costly permits, said Fenichel.

From the Asbury Park Press:

New N.J. taxes top other states’ cuts

It was a good year for taxpayers in most states.

Awash in surplus money from an improving economy, 24 states cut taxes in 2006. Others increased the amount of money they spent on programs and boosted reserves to help the next time fiscal woes come calling.

New Jersey was not among them.

The Garden State increased sales, corporate, cigarette and other taxes by $1.84 billion, easily the largest total tax increase among states in 2006, according to a new report from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. The second-highest, Texas, increased cigarette and tobacco taxes by $431 million, the report found.

The ranking riled state Republicans, who are in the minority in New Jersey’s Legislature.

“New Jersey taxpayers are being bled dry,” said Assembly Minority Leader Alex DeCroce, R-Morris.

While 14 other states also increased taxes in 2006, New Jersey alone boosted taxes nearly as much as the entire country cut them. Overall, states cut taxes $2.1 billion in 2006, the report found.

The findings were no surprise to Gov. Corzine who, along with fellow Democratic leaders, approved the tax hikes to close a projected $4.5 billion budget deficit. The move wasn’t easy: The legislative dispute around it shut down state government for a week and caused Atlantic City’s casinos to close their doors briefly.

“We have not been managing the finances of the state in a way that is reflective of sound fiscal policy,” Corzine said in a recent interview.

With a projected $2 billion deficit looming for 2007, New Jersey lawmakers will continue trying to repair the state’s finances as other states enjoy what Raymond C. Scheppach, National Governors Association executive director, described as a “good time to be governor.”

“The stable, healthy fiscal condition of states across the nation affords current governors options their predecessors did not experience,” he said.

New Jersey in recent years has increased spending on, among other things, poor city schools, child welfare reforms, debt and homeland security. Meanwhile, the state skipped public worker pension payments and relied on moves such as raiding an unemployment compensation fund and borrowing billions to balance spending.

Now, the state struggles to pay for public schools, property tax cuts, health care, open space preservation and state college and university aid.

From the NY Post:

HOUSING ILLUSIONS

HERE’S something to toast at midnight tonight: 2006 has been a great year to live, work and own real estate in New York.

Even those not lucky enough to toil at Goldman Sachs shared the riches. The stock market defied all odds and climbed more than 16 percent as measured by the Dow Jones industrials, while a reported $28 billion Wall Street bonus pool kept local real estate prices sky-high and stores and restaurants humming.

In fact, it’s fair to say that this year, Wall Street’s disconnect from the rest of the country grew wider than ever.

It’s little wonder then, that the street’s top economists, living here in hedge-fund land, are almost universally sanguine about the economy and the housing market as we head into 2007. In fact, in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, more than two-thirds of those surveyed believe the worst of the housing market decline is behind us.

Indeed, perhaps the most contrarian bet for 2007 would be that the U.S. housing market will get worse before it gets better. The case from the housing bears goes something like this: First of all, the so-called soft landing we’ve seen in the housing market in the year just passed isn’t enough to wash away the excesses of the bubble years from 2001 to 2006.

In fact, according to Merrill Lynch, the glut of unsold homes continues to grow - with a record 4.3 million residential units still for sale this fall. And with new construction still booming by historical standards, Merrill Lynch estimates it could be at least a year before the supply overhang starts to dry up.

In other words, any turnaround in home demand and prices will take us well into 2008.

Even Ben Bernanke’s Fed has put the nation on notice. In the statement following its December meeting, the Central Bank called the slowdown in the housing market this year “substantial” - clearly raising the red flag about a housing fallout in the months to come.
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It’s a bold prediction, but one that comes from the nation’s heartland - a place where they may not be partying like we are in Manhattan this New Year’s Eve, but a place where they may have a better sense of the pulse of the 2007 economy.

From the Otteau Group:

NOVEMBER SALES SUGGEST HOUSING MARKET BEGINNING TO STABILIZE

November home sales declined only slightly from the October pace reflecting more of a seasonal trend than a slump for the New Jersey housing market. In November, contract-sales declined by 10% from the prior month suggesting that the housing market is beginning to gain traction and may be nearing the end of its current slide. By comparison, the month-to-month decline in contract-sales one year earlier in November 2005 was 17% which went beyond a normal seaonal decline and reflected the housing slump that has been gripping the market for the past year.

Upon comparing the November sales pace to November 2005, contract-sales were off by only 6% which is the lowest decline for all of 2006. By comparison, monthly home sales were off by 19% from January through October and a whopping 23% during April through September, which were the worst months of the market correction.

From an Unsold Inventory perspective, the number of homes being offered for sale declined for the 3rd straight month with a reduction of 5,000 homes in November alone. Despite these encouraging signs however, Unsold Inventory now stands at 9.1 months based upon the November sales pace, indicating that home prices will not increase any time soon. By comparison, there were 6.3 months of Unsold Inventory one year ago and 10.4 months in September 2006. Therefore, the improvements in the housing market over the past two months signal more ‘bottoming-out’ than ‘recovery’.

There is however cause for cautious optimism as continuing low mortgage rates, new job creation and rising salaries are creating additional demand for home sales. Based upon these factors, coupled with the improved market performance of the past two months, it appears that the adjustment in the housing market will be more Correction than Crash. However, new home-builders and home-sellers alike would be wise to recognize that recent improvements are driven primarily by lower home prices which have restored a measure of affordability for home buyers. Thus, any attempts to increase prices during the early phases of market recovery will likely be unsuccessful. Therefore, Right-Pricing! will remain essential to successful home marketing.

From the Asbury Park Press:

Five tests to determine real property tax reform

We’ll know real property tax reform when we see it. We’ve been closely following the Legislature’s special session. And we haven’t seen it yet. But we’ll know it when we see it, because it will meet five tests.

First, real property tax reform will reduce property taxes as a share of overall public revenue. New Jersey’s heavy reliance on property taxes to fund governmental programs and services needs to be reduced from the current 46 percent, as a share of total tax revenue, to near the national average of 30 percent.

Second, real reform will eliminate inequities in the current system of raising revenues, especially as those inequities affect low- and moderate-income residents. Households with incomes in the lowest 20 percent pay 9.2 percent of their earnings in property taxes, while the wealthiest 20 percent pay 3.6 percent of their income through this assessment. An equitable system would not ask those with the least to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden.

Third, real property tax reform would provide relief from the property tax burden on primary residences, whether rented or owned. It would reduce the New Jersey per capita property tax burden, which amounted to $1,887 in 2002, closer to the national average of $979. In that year, New Jersey property taxes equaled 5 percent, as a percentage of personal income — almost two points above the national average of 3.2 percent.

Fourth, it would provide alternatives that lessen the dependence of school districts and local government on property taxes.
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And fifth, real property tax reform would provide the means to ensure that reductions in property taxes would be sustained over time. This can occur only if the governor and the Legislature agree to address the principal drivers of local government spending.

From the New York Times:

Newcomers to New Jersey Earn More Than Those Who’ve Left, Figures Show

A state short on cachet, New Jersey is getting longer on wealth: New figures from the Internal Revenue Service show that those who moved in last year have more money than those who left, a result, some experts say, of the rising cost of buying a home in the state.

The data from 2005 tax returns show that the median adjusted gross income of households coming to New Jersey from other states was $34,081, compared with $31,491 for those departing New Jersey. New Jersey seems to be absorbing more affluent taxpayers at New York’s expense: Last year, 30,082 households, with a median income of $42,889, moved from New York to New Jersey; the 19,381 households that New Jersey lost to New York had a median income of $34,003.

“What the I.R.S. data is saying to me is that it’s only the wealthy who can afford to live in the northern half of New Jersey,” said Tim Evans, research director of New Jersey Future, a planning group. Of those moving out, Mr. Evans said, “My guess is that they’re middle-income people who are moving out for the four-bedroom house.”

Looking at a different set of numbers released by the Census Bureau earlier this year, New Jersey regained its No. 1 ranking for total household income in 2005, with a median of $61,672, just ahead of Maryland ($61,592) and Connecticut ($60,941). New York is 15th, with a median income of $49,480.
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Regardless of what is happening with the very rich, James W. Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers, said New Jersey was losing too many middle-income people because of high property taxes and housing costs.

The number of residents going to other states has been increasing for years, Mr. Hughes said, and the most recent annual loss reported by the Census Bureau was 72,547 — “probably the highest net out-migration we’ve ever had.”
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For companies that try to transfer people into New Jersey, there’s always the issue of sticker shock and higher housing costs,” Mr. Hughes said. “So one way of looking at this is that the only people who can move here are the higher-income ones.”

The 2005 tax data did not include the 54,000 immigrants who settled in New Jersey last year. If they are on the lower end of the income scale, Mr. Hughes pointed out, that could offset the increased median income from the interstate moves.

“It may well be that some of the people moving in are high-income New Yorkers moving to the Hudson County waterfront or to Montclair,” he said, “but given a 54,000 gap, do we still have a net gain?”
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New Jersey residents who left last year were moving to New York most often, but almost as many went to Pennsylvania (18,806 households) and Florida (17,369 households).

Most of them were retirees or younger families in search of bigger houses, said Mr. Evans of New Jersey Future, who has traced migration in and out of New Jersey in detail. He documents a continuing westward flow across the northern tier of the state and into Pennsylvania while Philadelphia sends people to South Jersey.

From the Asbury Park Press:

Wayne to buy 41 flood-prone properties, then tear them down

Homes in a low-lying section of this northern New Jersey community will be bought and razed by the township because they regularly flood when the Pompton River overflows its banks.

Mayor Scott Rumana told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Thursday’s newspapers that the township will buy the 41 properties with the help of $5.9 million in promised federal and state aid.

Officials are making the move so they can stop having to rescue homeowners and help rebuild their houses after the floods.

Most of the properties have been appraised at between $150,000 and $175,000, Rumana said. Some homeowners paid less for their homes; properties in other sections of Wayne sell for nearly $400,000.

Melissa Miller’s home flooded several times within months of her purchase of the property three years ago, and she forecast the need to leave back then.

“I looked at my husband and kind of jokingly said, “We’re selling the house,’ ” Miller recalled. “Because it was already the third flood. And I said, “Okay, we’re done, I’m out of here, I’m not used to this.’ ”

Environmentalists said the land was never suitable for housing and will help mitigate flooding by being returned to absorbent wetlands.

From the Trenton Times:

Future taxes seem grim Hamilton residents warned of big boost

Though the coming year’s budget has not been put to bed, township taxpayers have been warned to brace for a wallop in 2008.

Auditor Robert Morrison told the township council last week that a preliminary review of several budget items revealed an estimated 12-cent increase in the 2008 tax rate. The projected $6.2 million shortfall would mean an extra $158 per year in taxes on a home assessed at the township average of $132,000.

The hike would be on the heels of the 3-cent tax rate increase included in the 2007 budget, which has yet to be passed.

But township officials warn that projections are premature and much can happen before June when the new budget process begins.

“You need a crystal ball to know what the revenues will be next year,” township Business Administrator John Mason said. “Revenues fluctuate up and down and certain revenues are stable.”

Reached yesterday, Morrison stressed that the numbers are only estimates and do not represent an official accounting of next year’s spending. The calculations are based on assumed increases in salaries, health insurance, pensions and debt payments of more than $4 million. In addition, Morrison’s forecast removes from the 2008 budget $2.1 million in one-time revenues used this year that will not be available again.

From the National Association of Realtors:

November Existing Home Sales (PDF)

From the AP:

Home sales gain slightly in November

Sales of existing homes managed to eke out a small increase in November but the price of homes sold fell for a record fourth consecutive month, a real estate trade group reported Thursday.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously owned homes rose 0.6 percent in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.28 million units. That followed a 0.5 percent sales increase in October and marked the first back-to-back sales gains since the spring of 2005.

The slight increases in sales were not enough to halt a slide in home prices. The median price for an existng home sold in November dropped to $218,000, down 3.1 percent from the price a year ago. It was the first time on record that sales prices compared to a year ago have fallen for four straight months.

From Marketwatch:

Existing-home sales rise 0.6% to 6.28 mln units

Sales of U.S. existing homes rose 0.6% in November, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.28 million, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.

Inventories of unsold homes fell 1%, to 3.82 million, representing a 7.3-month supply.
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Sales are down 10.7% in the past year.

The median sales price fell, year on year, by 3.1% to $218,000.

Sales of single-family homes rose 0.2% to a 5.52 million annual pace. Single-family-home sales are down 10.2% in the past year.

Condominium-unit sales rose 3.1% in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 757,000. Condo sales are down 13.6% in the past year, while median prices are unchanged at $224,600.
Last month’s sales rose 0.6% in the Northeast, 0.8% in the West and were unchanged in the Midwest, the NAR’s data showed. Sales fell 1.6% in the South.

From the Philly Inquirer:

Jobs in N.J. could use lift from Corzine growth plan
By James W. Hughes and Joseph J. Seneca

s 2006 comes to a close, jobs in New Jersey are at a record level, approaching 4.1 million. The state’s powerful core economy - pharmaceuticals, financial activities, telecommunications, and professional and business services - continues to generate high incomes, bolstering New Jersey’s position as one of the nation’s premier consumer markets.

However, the current decade has brought only minimal growth in the core economy. Jobs growth also has been lagging far behind the rest of the country. The jobs picture has been particularly disappointing this year, and likely will not be better next year.

To put this in perspective, on average 77,000 jobs a year were created during the last two expansions - the 83-month expansion from 1982 to 1989 and the 103-month expansion from 1992 to 2000.

The current New Jersey expansion - 54 months long as of next month - has not come close to approaching that annual pace of jobs growth.

In 2004 and 2005, the state added on average 40,000 jobs a year. During the first 11 months of this year, it did not attain even this modest pace of growth: New Jersey added jobs at an annualized rate of 21,000.

Why is this happening to such an affluent state?

Higher interest rates, volatile energy costs, a maturing national expansion, and a slowdown of housing activity slowed economic growth in New Jersey this year from the already below-average pace of the previous two years.

But in recent years, growing problems of housing affordability, declining business cost competitiveness, undisciplined state finances, and a lack of public-policy focus on the economy also have taken their toll.

In the 1990s, we had the comfortable notion that New Jersey had an unusually talented labor pool, and that the Information Age economy was willing to pay our high costs to access that pool.

However, intensifying global competition; intensifying competition for advanced, knowledge-based jobs among the states; and an increasingly mobile labor force have rendered that notion obsolete.
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New Jersey’s slowdown is far worse than the nation’s.

In the first 11 months of this year, New Jersey ranked 44th among the states in the rate of private-sector job growth (0.4 percent). That put it way behind West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee - none of them an economic powerhouse.

Meanwhile, private-sector employment in the nation expanded by 1.2 percent.

One result is that the state has fallen from ninth place to 10th in total employment. In April, Georgia surpassed New Jersey and is now ninth.

All of this sets the stage for modest expectations next year. In a slowing national growth context, New Jersey will struggle to match the employment gains of 2006.

From the Courier Post Online:

N.J. growth hit snag, Fed says

New Jersey’s economy was all but stagnant last month following two months of healthy growth, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported Wednesday.

The regional bank said the Garden State’s economy expanded by just 0.1 percent in November after growing by 0.3 percent each in September and October and by a total of 2.5 percent since December 2005.

“That’s a slowdown,” said economist Ted Crone, a vice president at the bank.

Crone said, however, it is too soon to say whether November’s tiny growth is a one-month blip or the start of a trend.

“I wouldn’t want to hang my hat on one month” of data, he said. “We want to have three months’ data before we can say whether we’ve ratcheted down to a lower plane.”

Crone said the latest monthly figure, called the current economic index, is preliminary, so the 0.1 percent could be revised in the next month or two based on additional numbers. The index is calculated using data and survey results covering areas including employment level, the unemployment rate and average hours worked in manufacturing.

In November, the number of jobs based in New Jersey rose by just 900, to 4,083,700. At the same time, the state’s unemployment rate edged up from 4.4 percent to 4.5 percent, matching the national rate after months of exceeding the U.S. level substantially. The state’s rate had been as high as 5.2 percent in September after hovering around that level since last April, when the rate rose after an entire quarter of slow job growth, Crone said.

Another factor resulting in the slow growth rate in November was the drop in the average hours put in by manufacturing workers, from 41.5 hours to 41.3 hours per week.

“It’s been fairly weak in the last three months,” Crone said, noting the housing market has been slow as well.

From Bloomberg:

Housing Bears May Just Have It Right for 2007: Gene Sperling

For economic forecasters divided over the strength of the economy in 2007, the elephant in the room remains the house, or more precisely, housing.

While very few forecasters predict growth of more than 3 percent for next year, and most agree that the cooling of the housing boom may hurt consumers, one major question remains: Is the worst over?

Housing played an outsized role in the most recent recovery. Beyond the surge in residential investment — which accounts for 5 percent to 6 percent of the economy — rising home prices and billions of dollars in home-equity extraction fueled household spending at a time of stagnant wages and low private saving.

Few dispute that a slumping housing market will have a depressive effect on consumer spending. What is less clear is whether we can now officially declare a soft landing, or whether we should expect more turbulence from the unraveling of the housing boom.

Some of the smartest economists in the U.S. now say the worst of the housing cycle is over. Indeed, two-thirds of economists in a recent Wall Street Journal survey answered affirmatively that “the worst of the housing bust is behind us.” Their case is that even after a 17 percent fall in new-home prices and a significant decline in home-equity withdrawal in the third quarter, consumer spending defied gravity and remained at 3.1 percent.
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The problem is that none of the bulls seem to have a good answer to the facts being laid out by David Rosenberg, the chief economist for North America at Merrill Lynch & Co. Rosenberg’s contention is that when you take a close look at homes for sale, including those being completed and those under construction, the glut in supply seems likely to get worse, not better.
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In a Nov. 27 comment, Rosenberg notes that in addition to the record 4.3 million residential units for sale as of October, there were 1.95 million home completions, the 12th-highest month since 1979. Units under construction were through the roof as well. Rather than seeing supply dwindle and prices start to firm up in early 2007, Rosenberg says “it could be a year before the reduction in starts begins to put a meaningful dent into the inventory backlog.”

John Mauldin, an investment adviser and frequent contributor to Investors Insight, a financial-data publisher, throws an extra log on the fire. According to Mauldin, even the current projection of housing sales may be overstated and thus the existing supply of homes greater than what is reported in the official data. The reason is that the Census Bureau, one of the Commerce Department’s statistical agencies, fails to account for cancellations in home sales contracts. Cancellations ran as high as 40 percent for some major homebuilding firms last quarter.
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Nonetheless, as the new year approaches, the housing bears seem closer to getting it right than the Goldilocks crowd.

Welcome to another edition of Lowball!

Lowball! takes a look at home sales from a different perspective. For those new to Lowball!, a lowball offer is when a buyer offers a significantly lower bid than asking in hopes that the seller accepts the offer. We take a list of home sales from the past month and pick out the sales that have the highest percentage difference between original list price and selling price.

The purpose of Lowball! is to show buyers that the market has changed and buyers now have considerably more leverage than sellers. Just a short time ago, Lowball! offers would have been laughed at and discarded, however, not any more. The fact that so many under-asking offers are being accepted is clear proof that the market is changing.

The first table contains Lowball sales of 25% or greater off the Original List Price.

The second table contains Lowball sales of greater than $250,000 off of the Original List Price.

Additional sales data can be found here: Sales-Dec06.xls (In Excel Format)

Caveat Emptor!
jb

From the AP via the Star Ledger:

Home-price growth slows dramatically

Prices of single- family homes across the nation rose in October at the slowest rate in almost a decade, a housing index released yesterday by Standard & Poor’s showed, giving more evidence of the housing market’s deceleration, which has affected many parts of the broader economy.

The S&P/Case-Shiller composite index showed a 2.4 percent year-over-year increase in the price of a single-family home based on prices of existing homes tracked over time in 10 metropolitan markets. For its 20-city composite index, prices grew 2.9 percent, the slowest rate ever for that data, according to the S&P index committee chairman, David Blitzer.

“Home price gains are continuing their steep deceleration,” said Chief Economist Robert Shiller of MacroMarkets. “We can clearly see that the monthly price declines are widespread nationally.”

The growth rate of the 10-city composite index is sharply below the 3.7 percent rise posted in September and the slowest since a 2 percent growth rate in February 1997, according to S&P.

In addition to the overall composite index, the housing indicator also measures the health of exist ing home sales in 20 major markets in the United States. The S&P added 10 additional markets this month.

Among the worst performing markets were Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, San Diego and San Francisco. Seattle and Portland, Ore., meanwhile, posted strong annual returns.