New Jersey Real Estate Report

(Karen Weaver from Deutsche Bank provided a similar forecast a little over two weeks ago.)

From CNBC:

US Home Prices Seen Falling 40% Overall: Analyst

U.S. housing prices will fall by a double-digit percentage from already beaten-down levels, resulting in an overall 40 percent plunge by the time foreclosures peak in the second half of 2010, Barclays Capital economist Michelle Meyer said.

Meyer issued her forecast two days after the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes showed for April an 18.1 percent year-to-year decline, compared with 18.7 percent in March, in the rate of home price declines in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas.

The indexes have tracked the prices of U.S. single-family homes since 1987.

“While the early signs of improvement are in place for housing, the market will likely remain out of balance for some time, given the flood of foreclosures,” Meyer wrote.

“Home prices are likely to continue to fall, albeit at a slowing pace, even after the economy technically emerges from the recession.” Home prices have fallen 32.6 percent from their peak three years ago, S&P/Case-Shiller said.

On that basis, they would need to fall another 11 percent for an overall 40 percent peak-to-trough decline. Further declines could imperil metropolitan areas that have yet to experience the worst of the nation’s housing slump.

According to S&P/Case-Shiller, New York was the only major market to have above-average, month-over-month housing price declines in both March and April and also have a below-average decline for the year ended in April.

From Bloomberg:

U.S. Foreclosures to Peak in Late 2010, Meyer Says

U.S. foreclosures will peak in the second half of 2010 and home prices will continue to decline through the end of that year, according to Barclays Capital.

“Home prices are likely to continue to fall, albeit at a slowing pace, even after the economy technically emerges from the recession,” Michelle Meyer, an economist at Barclays Capital in New York, said in a report today. Prices may drop another 7 percent, she said, based on the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 U.S. cities.

The three-year-old housing slump has slashed U.S. home prices 33 percent since their July 2006 peak, according to S&P/Case-Shiller. Prospective buyers are constrained by rising mortgage rates, the highest unemployment since 1983 and the longest recession of the post-World War II era.

U.S. homeowners trying to sell are competing with a glut of discounted foreclosures. It would take about 9.6 months to sell the nation’s 3.8 million unsold homes at the current sales pace, according to the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors.

From Bloomberg:

Manhattan Apartment Prices Drop as Lehman Effect Hits Home

Manhattan apartment prices dropped for the first time since 2002 in the second quarter as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. caught up to property owners in the nation’s most expensive urban market.

The median price fell 18.5 percent from a year earlier to $835,700, New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate said today. The number of sales plunged by half, the most since Miller Samuel began keeping data in 1989.

“The standstill that existed after Lehman Brothers has been broken, and it was the sellers that cried ‘Uncle,’” Pamela Liebman, chief executive officer of New York-based property broker the Corcoran Group, said in an interview.

Values are falling broadly in Manhattan for the first time in the almost four-year U.S. housing recession, with declines now seen in co-operatives and condominiums of every size and price. Private-sector employment in the city dropped by 91,200 jobs, or 2.8 percent in the 12 months through May as Wall Street losses and asset writedowns topped $1.4 trillion.

The price of studio apartments declined 16 percent from a year ago to a median of $405,000, according to Miller Samuel. One-bedrooms dropped 17 percent to $650,000 and two-bedrooms fell 23 percent to $1.27 million. Three-bedroom units fell 37 percent to $2.35 million and four-bedrooms plummeted 47 percent to a median of $3.92 million.

The Miller Samuel-Prudential data reflect for the first time what sellers have known for at least six months: The way to lure a buyer in the current market is to cut your price.
…
About 32 percent of second-quarter listings included discounts from the original asking price, according to StreetEasy.com, a Web site that gathers Manhattan property listings from brokers. The deepest concessions were on Central Park South and in the Financial District, where list prices were pared by an average of 10 percent.

“The sellers who want to sell are reducing their prices,” Liebman said. “The ones that aren’t, are either sitting on them overpriced or waiting for another day.”

Due out at 9am this morning, post will be updated as news/info becomes available.

From Bloomberg:

Home-Price Declines in 20 U.S. Cities Eased in April

Home prices in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas fell in April at a slower pace than forecast, a sign the plunge in real-estate values is abating.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.1 percent from a year earlier following an 18.7 percent drop in March. The measure declined 19 percent in January, the most since the data began in 2001.

Price declines are likely to keep moderating as demand steadies and distressed properties account for a smaller share of transactions. Still, the highest jobless rate in 25 years is contributing to record foreclosures, which are likely to keep depressing values for months to come even as home sales steady.

“It is looking a little bit better,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The largest declines are probably past. When prices stop falling the erosion in household wealth will come to an end.”

Economists forecast the index would drop 18.6 percent, according to the estimates of 33 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Estimates ranged from drops of 17.7 percent to 19.4 percent.

From MarketWatch:

U.S. home prices down 18.1% in past year

U.S. home prices were down 18.1% in the year ended April, according to the national Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday. On a month-to-month basis, prices in 20 selected cities fell 0.6% in April, with declines in 11 cities. Still, the overall pace of decline slowed in April, said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee for Standard & Poor’s, which compiles the Case-Shiller index. “Every metro area, except for Charlotte, recorded an improvement in monthly returns over March,” Blitzer said. “While one month’s data cannot determine if a turnaround has begun, it seems that some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions.”

From the WSJ:

Home Prices Drop at Slower Pace

U.S. home prices continued their multiyear tumble in April, according to the S&P Case-Shiller home-price indexes, although the indexes showed their third-straight month of slightly smaller declines.

Seventeen of 20 major metropolitan areas posted price declines of more than 10% from a year earlier, with the Sun Belt continuing to be hit hardest. Nationally, home prices are at levels similar to the middle of 2003.

From the AP:

Home prices post 18.1 percent annual drop in April

A key housing index shows a clear trend that home price declines are moderating.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed home prices in 20 major cities tumbled by 18.1 percent from April 2008. The 10-city index fell 18 percent from the year before.

April, however, marked the third straight month both indexes didn’t set record price declines. And yearly losses in 13 metros improved compared to March.

Still, the 20-city index is off almost 33 percent from its peak in the second quarter of 2006, and the 10-city has dropped by almost 34 percent, which means home values are now around 2003-levels.

From CNBC:

Five Reasons Housing Market Still Hasn’t Recovered Yet

What happened to the housing recovery?

Despite hopes that the market would begin showing signs of life this spring, the latest housing data suggests otherwise. Instead, the sector remains stubbornly moribund—trapped in a spiral of declining prices, increasing mortgage rates, unemployment and several unforeseen factors.

And with many experts believing that a real estate rebound is critical for the overall economy to recover, patience with housing is beginning to wear thin.

“We’re dealing with a problem that probably took us eight years to get into and expecting to get out of it in eight minutes, and it’s just not going to happen,” says Rick Sharga, analyst for RealtyTrac, which follows real estate trends. “The frustration might be more self-induced or self-inflicted than necessarily something the real world would create.”

Experts cite various reasons for the continuing problems with housing and say it’s unrealistic to expect a full recovery anytime soon.

Economists have all been pretty consistent in that they expect the housing market to bottom out at the end of this year or the beginning of next year,” Sharga adds. “It’s not going to be a rapid recovery.”

Experts break housing’s problems into five key areas.

1) Unemployment
…
2) Credit Availability
…
3) Price Pressures
…
4) Appraisals
…
5) Short Sales

Don’t miss the meet-up tomorrow!

When: Friday June 26th, 7:30ish
Where: Fitzgerald’s 1928 http://www.fitzgeralds1928.com
13 Herman Street (off Bloomfield Ave)
Glen Ridge, NJ 07028
Google Maps Link

For drivers, this is right off exit 148 on the Parkway.
For those looking for mass transit, Fitzgeralds is 2 blocks away from the Glen Ridge Station on the Montclair Boonton Line.

—————————-

From the Huffington Post:

Roiling On The Rivers Of Real Estate

To every analyst, forecaster, and economist predicting they see the bottom of the real estate market, I respond as Vinnie Barbarino might: “Where? Where?” I know the bottom is there–we all do– but much like in a polluted riverbed, it is hard to spot and treacherous to reach.

More than three years ago, I saw the banks of the NY metro housing market erode from my vantage point as an attorney wading in its waters. I saw serial refinancers, living on their equity, and watched repayment-challenged buyers receive mortgages as easily as frogs catch flies. Appraisers inflated values in far from desirable areas, encouraging investors to leave multiple homes vacant while they slapped on a coat of paint and re-faced the kitchen cabinets before cashing out from the next no money down speculators.

Then the more-more-more river turned stagnant; occasionally, like a skipping stone, a transaction did skitter along, only to sink with an inglorious “thud.” In early spring, multiple pebbles started being flung furiously at the water, causing expert analysts to calibrate and celebrate the quantity of rocks, while ignoring the clunks that frequently still follow. The bottom must be close, they espouse: look at the volume of activity in the real estate market!

I’m still deep in the real estate waters, loudly hearing the sounds of sinking stones while those in the lifeguard towers think they hear surging surf. As the summer of 2009 begins, the latest wave of “can you help me?” calls I answer are no longer primarily from “sub-prime” borrowers. I’ve either helped them, or been unable to, and they’ve moved on. Nowadays the borrowers in a boatload of trouble and months behind in their mortgages formerly had better-than-decent credit, good jobs, and 20% or more money to put down (or a great deal of equity in their homes).

Some buyers, sensing blood in the waters, want houses upgraded and improved before they close. Sellers without the funds to accommodate these demands are deemed “unrealistic” as the buyers move on. Yesterday’s market was significantly overpriced, but today’s has very little negotiation, with a significant number of buyers regressing to their toddler years to get what they want. There’s something about a population of homeowners who came into title via temper tantrums that cannot bode well for smooth sailing back to a stable real estate market.

I also come across sellers who remind me of cartoon character grandfathers, preferring to live in “the good old days” when their homes were worth 15-20-25% more. Those days are gone, grandpa–it’s time to sell the ranch for whatever you can realistically get if you want to move on.
…
There’s definitely a bottom to the real estate market. But to finish with my water metaphors, the bottom is not clearly visible through yesterday’s floating wreckage and today’s murky transactions. We need to save the drowners, repel the sharks, and raise the level of the bottom feeders. Only then will we be able to plot a safe course home.

From the AP/APP:

Northeast home sales, prices drop in May

Home sales in the Northeast declined more than 13 percent in May from year-ago levels, the worst showing in the country, as the specter of job losses loomed over the region.

The median sales price in the Northeast dropped almost 13 percent to $243,600, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.

Nationally, sales of existing homes tumbled 6.6 percent in May from the previous year, without adjusting for seasonal factors. The U.S. median sales price slid almost 17 percent to $173,000.

But James Diffley, group managing director of IHS Global Insight’s regional services group, focused more on the 7.6 month-to-month sales gain in the Northeast.

“The numbers are giving some comfort that we’re at the bottom,” Diffley said. “We have a more optimistic view than just a few months ago.”

In fact, all nine major Northeast cities tracked in the Associated Press-Re/Max Monthly Housing Report showed monthly gains in home sales. But compared to last May, sales were down across the board with with seven metro areas recording double-digit declines.
…
Jitters are still running high in the suburbs of New York, where sales fell by 30 percent, the worst decline in the region. Excluding New York City, the median price in the area fell almost 8 percent to $388,000 as job losses on Wall Street rippled through the local economy.

Mark your calendars, the long awaited GTG

When: Friday June 26th, 7:30ish

Location: Fitzgerald’s 1928 http://www.fitzgeralds1928.com
13 Herman Street (off Bloomfield Ave)
Glen Ridge, NJ 07028
Google Maps Link

For drivers, this is right off exit 148 on the Parkway.
For those looking for mass transit, Fitzgeralds is 2 blocks away from the Glen Ridge Station on the Montclair Boonton Line.

————————————

From the Record:

Report: Housing market suffered “massive shock”

The housing market has suffered a “massive shock” and faces a difficult recovery in the face of job losses, foreclosures and tight credit, according to a report released today by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

“It’s difficult to overstate the challenges in the housing market today,” said Nicholas Retsinas, director of the center, who presented the annual State of the Nation’s Housing report in New York City. “While there are some positive signs in the marketplace, the macroeconomic forces are still overwhelmingly negative.”

The good news is that the bursting of the housing bubble has made real estate more affordable. And, looking over the next 10 years, the huge “echo boomer” generation will soon start establishing their own households in large numbers, increasing demand for homes.

In North Jersey and the rest of the New York metropolitan area, homes have held their value better than in many regions of the nation as the housing bubble burst over the past several years. But price declines in the New York area have begun to accelerate, partly as a result of job cuts in financial services, a major economic engine for the region.

Eric Belsky, executive director of the housing center, said the home price declines are likely to continue in the area for some time — though they will not drop as much as in areas such as Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California, where developers overbuilt during the housing boom. Because this area is already largely developed, and state and local governments tightly regulate construction, builders did not overbuild in North Jersey.

From Reuters:

Spring U.S. housing market fell short-Coldwell CEO

This year’s peak home-buying season was lackluster, as buyers seeking to trade up to larger houses were absent, said the head of one of the country’s largest real estate firms.

Jim Gillespie, president and chief executive of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC, in an interview with Reuters, said sales were only modest during the spring, with demand overwhelmingly dominated by first-time home buyers and investors.

“The more important ‘move-up’ buyers were absent and that is not encouraging,” said Gillespie, who is based in Parsippany, New Jersey.

Move-up buyers are those seeking to trade in their current home for a larger one, and Gillespie said that group is important for sustaining a healthy real estate market. Because of the sharp decline in housing prices and the collapse in consumer demand, homeowners are having difficulty selling their current homes to move up to pricier properties.

“They are key to a U.S. housing market recovery,” he said.
…
Gillespie said market realities have come to bear as well. As government bond yields rose, mortgage rates have naturally followed. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.38 percent for the week ending June 18, according to a survey released on Thursday by home funding company Freddie Mac.

That was down from the previous week’s 5.59 percent, which was the highest level since November, but up sharply from the record low of 4.78 percent set the week ending April 2.

“Many people got spoiled by mortgage rates at 5 percent and below,” he said.

“When the mortgage rate rose above 5 percent, it spooked many buyers who were already hesitant,” he said.

From Bloomberg:

U.S. Home Prices to Fall 14% More, Deutsche Says

U.S. home prices may fall another 14 percent, led by the New York and Orange County, California, metropolitan areas, before reaching a bottom as an increase in unemployment offsets lower prices, Deutsche Bank AG said.

“Affordability is no longer the driving issue in the housing market, and we believe prices still have a ways to fall in many areas before home prices reach their trough,” Deutsche Bank analysts led by Karen Weaver, wrote in a report yesterday. “The bottom is getting closer, but we are not there yet.”

Home prices are forecast to fall 41.7 percent from their peak, Weaver said. That’s higher than a forecast she released in March and reflects “the actual declines to date and the expected future impact on home prices from rising foreclosure inventory and unemployment.”

In March, Deutsche Bank had forecast a 16.5 percent decline in “current-to-trough” prices. While today’s projection is less than that, many metropolitan areas will still see steep declines, the report said.

In the New York metropolitan area they may drop 40.6 percent from the first quarter to the bottom, the report said, less than Deutsche Bank’s March estimate of 47.4 percent.

Financial firms have cut more than 183,000 jobs in the Americas in the global credit crisis, driving down prices and rents in the New York area. In New York City, Manhattan co-op prices slid the most since 1995 in the first quarter, according to data from Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

From Reuters:

Is the housing bust about to take Manhattan?

New York City real estate prices are looking increasingly shaky as instability in two of the city’s sexier submarkets — second homes in the Hamptons, and new condos in Manhattan — register the latest signs of a housing downturn.

Property prices in the Hamptons, a fabled playground of the rich on nearby Long Island, rose steadily for almost two decades, but the prices on almost 1-in-3 of current listings have been cut an average 11 percent from the initial asking, said Sofia Kim of real estate website StreetEasy.com.

Back in town, the number of sales in new developments dropped a whopping 71 percent in April from a year earlier as condo developers enmeshed in complicated financing arrangements have been slow to slash prices even as the market corrected all around them, Kim said.

But if prices on these new condo towers do not fall to match the rest of the market and stay empty as a result, then it could eventually trigger foreclosures of entire properties, forcing much bigger price cuts as lenders seek to reduce their liability.

“If you have a property not priced at market, is it going to sell? Something has to give,” said Jonathan Miller, author of real estate broker Prudential Douglas Elliman’s market reports.
…
The elite in the real estate industry had once hoped Manhattan could escape relatively unhurt as other housing markets suffered. But the collapses of financial powerhouses such as Lehman and Bear Stearns destroyed such thinking.

“What ended up killing us was the foreclosure crisis because that’s what killed Wall Street,” said Rick Hoffman, a regional senior vice president in the Hamptons for the Corcoran Group, a high-end brokerage. “It bit us in the end.”

From Fitch Ratings:

Fitch Takes Various Actions on 543 2005-2008 U.S. Subprime RMBS Deals

Fitch Ratings has taken various rating actions on 543 2005 through 2008 vintage U.S. subprime RMBS transactions in the course of its ongoing review of subprime RMBS.
…
The updated expected collateral losses incorporate performance trends since the last rating revisions which relied on September 2008 remittance data. The projected losses also reflect an assumption that from the first quarter of 2009, home prices will fall an additional 12.5% nationally and 36% in California, with home prices not exhibiting stability until the second half of 2010. To date, national home prices have declined by 27%. Fitch Rating’s revised peak-to-trough expectation is for prices to decline by 36% from the peak price achieved in mid-2006. The additional 9% decline represents a 12.5% decline from today’s levels.

The home price declines to date have resulted in negative equity for approximately 50% of the remaining performing borrowers in the 2005-2007 vintages. In addition to continued home price deterioration, unemployment has risen significantly since the third quarter of last year, particularly in California where the unemployment rate has jumped from 7.8% to 11%.

The combination of continued home price and employment decline has kept negative pressure on the roll-rates of performing borrowers into a delinquency status. Although net roll-rates have moderated from the seasonal high in January, the most recent month’s performing-to-delinquent net roll-rate of 3.17% remained modestly higher than that exhibited in the third quarter of 2008 when modified loans are excluded.

From Bloomberg:

Option ARMs Threaten U.S. Housing Rebound as 2011 Resets Peak

Shirley Breitmaier’s mortgage payment started out at $98 when she refinanced her three-bedroom home in Galt, California, in 2007. The 73-year-old widow may see it jump to $3,500 a month in two years.

Breitmaier took out a payment-option adjustable rate mortgage, a loan popular during the housing boom for its low minimum payments before resetting at higher costs later.

About 1 million option ARMs are estimated to reset higher in the next four years, according to real estate data firm First American CoreLogic of Santa Ana, California. About three quarters of those loans will adjust next year and in 2011, with the peak coming in August 2011 when about 54,000 loans recast, the data show.

Option ARM borrowers hit with unaffordable monthly payments are another threat to the housing recovery and the economy, said Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia. Owners who surrender properties to the bank rather than make higher payments for homes that have plummeted in value will further depress real estate prices and add to the inventory of properties on the market, she said.

“The option ARM recasts will drive up the foreclosure supply, undermining the recovery in the housing market,” Wachter said in an interview. “The option ARMs will be part of the reason that the path to recovery will be long and slow.”
…
More than $750 billion of option ARMs were originated in the U.S. between 2004 and 2008, according to data from First American and Inside Mortgage Finance of Bethesda, Maryland. California accounted for 58 percent of option ARMs, according to a report by T2 Partners LLC, citing data from Amherst Securities and Loan Performance.
…
“Once you start amortizing that loan, the payment is going to shoot up,” said David Watts, a London-based strategist with research firm CreditSights.

The delinquency rate for payment-option ARMs originated in 2006 and bundled into securities is soaring, according to a May 5 report from Deutsche Bank AG. Over the past year, payments 60 days late or more on option ARMs originated in 2006 have almost doubled to 42.44 percent from 23.26 percent, Deutsche Bank said. For 2007 loans, the rate has climbed from 10.1 percent to 35.25 percent.

“We’re already seeing much higher levels of delinquencies of these option ARM loans even before you reach the point of the recast,” said Paul Leonard, the California director of the non- profit Center for Responsible Lending.

The threat of soaring payments has counselors at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates busy.

“There’s a level of hopelessness to the phone calls now,” said Brown.

From the NY Times:

Why Home Prices May Keep Falling
By ROBERT J. SHILLER

HOME prices in the United States have been falling for nearly three years, and the decline may well continue for some time.

Even the federal government has projected price decreases through 2010. As a baseline, the stress tests recently performed on big banks included a total fall in housing prices of 41 percent from 2006 through 2010. Their “more adverse” forecast projected a drop of 48 percent — suggesting that important housing ratios, like price to rent, and price to construction cost — would fall to their lowest levels in 20 years.

Such long, steady housing price declines seem to defy both common sense and the traditional laws of economics, which assume that people act rationally and that markets are efficient. Why would a sensible person watch the value of his home fall for years, only to sell for a big loss? Why not sell early in the cycle? If people acted as the efficient-market theory says they should, prices would come down right away, not gradually over years, and these cycles would be much shorter.

But something is definitely different about real estate. Long declines do happen with some regularity. And despite the uptick last week in pending home sales and recent improvement in consumer confidence, we still appear to be in a continuing price decline.

There are many historical examples. After the bursting of the Japanese housing bubble in 1991, land prices in Japan’s major cities fell every single year for 15 consecutive years.

Why does this happen? One could easily believe that people are a little slower to sell their homes than, say, their stocks. But years slower?
…
Even if there is a quick end to the recession, the housing market’s poor performance may linger. After the last home price boom, which ended about the time of the 1990-91 recession, home prices did not start moving upward, even incrementally, until 1997.

From Bloomberg:

Geithner Rents Westchester Home After Failing to Sell

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is renting his home in Westchester County, New York, for $7,500 a month after failing to find a buyer, according to data on the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service Inc.

Geithner, 47, was trying to sell the brick and stucco Tudor-style home, the listing shows. The house on Maple Hill Drive has five bedrooms, about 3,600 square feet, and an eat-in kitchen with Siematic cabinetry and black granite countertops.

“Careful attention has been paid to the design of every feature of this sophisticated home,” according to the listing.

The home was marketed in February for $1.635 million, according to Scott Stiefvater, president of Stiefvater Real Estate in Pelham, New York. The price was reduced to $1.575 million in May, he said.

The inventory of similar homes for sale in the area may have affected the property’s prospects, said Debbie Meiliken, a broker at Keller Williams Realty New York.

“There was a lot of competition,” Meiliken said. “Sometimes people will put the house for rent if they’re not prepared to sell it and take a loss.”

Home sales in Westchester County fell 41 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to an April 27 statement from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service. The county’s median home price fell 14.5 percent to $532,000, the organization said.

From the NY Daily News:

Geithner taking loss on home

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may know something about the stock market, but like most Americans he can’t control the housing market.

Unable to sell his luxurious five-bedroom Tudor in Mamaroneck even when he dropped the price, Geithner is renting out the place - at a probable loss, according to Westchester real estate agents.

When he moved to Washington to become President Obama’s top economic official, Geithner and his wife, Carole Sonnenfeld Geithner, put the house on the market for $1.635 million. Records show the couple paid $1.602 million for the home in 2004.

There were no takers even when he dropped the price to $1.575 million. So he rented the pad to an unidentified family for $7,500 a month in May. Real estate experts told the Associated Press that he’s probably losing on the deal, since he has two mortgages worth $1.25 million plus $27,000 in annual property taxes.

Just a word of caution when interpreting these numbers. The year over year change in contracts in the Northeast was up only 0.8% SAAR, and was down 0.8% NSA. While the month over month numbers showed a significant jump, they are still roughly 20% below peak numbers seen a few years back. Don’t misinterpret stabilization at a very low level as major rebound in sales or prices, because it isn’t happening.

The big question is, does this apply to New Jersey?

Well, let’s check the MLS.

Year over Year Change in Contracts (GSMLS)

Bergen County
April 2005 - 193
April 2008 - 161
April 2009 - 185 (Up 14.9%)

Hunterdon County
April 2005 - 222
April 2008 - 139
April 2009 - 118 (Down 15.1%)

Essex County
April 2005 - 501
April 2008 - 382
April 2009 - 386 (Up 1%)

Morris County
April 2005 - 667
April 2008 - 411
April 2009 - 426 (Up 3.6%)

Passaic County
April 2005 - 381
April 2008 - 244
April 2009 - 218 (Down 10.7%)

Somerset County
April 2005 - 462
April 2008 - 302
April 2009 - 296 (Down 2%)

Sussex County
April 2005 - 289
April 2008 - 133
April 2009 - 156 (Up 17.3%)

Union County
April 2005 - 492
April 2008 - 308
April 2009 - 344 (Up 11.7%)

Warren County
April 2005 - 178
April 2008 - 83
April 2009 - 82 (Flat)

Total
April 2005 - 3385
April 2008 - 2163
April 2009 - 2211 (Up 2.2%)

Year over Year Change in Contracts (NJMLS)

Bergen County
April 2005 - 1092
April 2008 - 733
April 2009 - 710 (Down 3.1%)

Passaic County
April 2008 - 218
April 2009 - 206 (Down 5.5%)

Hudson County
April 2008 - 83
April 2009 - 63 (Down 24.1%)

Essex County
April 2008 - 142
April 2009 - 135 (Down 4.9%)

Total
April 2008 - 1176
April 2009 - 1114 (Down 5.3%)

From the Star Ledger:

Pending home sales lunge forward in Northeast

A pending home sales index soared more than 32 percent in the Northeast in April over March and was up annually for the first time since August, the National Association of Realtors said today.

Pending sales also rose nationwide. The index, which is adjusted for seasonal buying patterns, reflects contracts signed in April. Economists and analysts have said they expect sales to rise as prices continue to fall throughout the year.

The real estate group attributed the rise to low mortgage rates and a federal first-time homebuyer tax credit of $8,000. That could help increase sales in coming months as the tax credit’s deadline nears.

“Since first-time buyers must finalize their purchase by Nov. 30 to get the credit, we expect greater activity in the months ahead, and that should spark more sales by repeat buyers,” the group’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said in a statement.
…
It might be some months before this rise shows up in standard sales statistics because of the length of time it has been taking buyers, sellers and banks to close deals, Yun said. Short sales in particular, in which banks agree to let homeowners sell their house for less than the mortgage, can take many months.

The index represents about 20 percent of transactions for existing homes and usually takes two months to show up in actual home sales.

Year-over-year sales rose in the Northeast for the first time since August, when the index was up 1.1 percent over August 2007, said Walter Molony, a spokesman for the group.