This one, from the Walkthru Blog, slipped through:
Bleak Open Houses
Another indication that the New York City housing market is slowing can be found in a report on open houses released yesterday by the Manhattan brokerage firm Barak Realty.
The company analyzed and charted average attendance at Sunday open houses from Jan. 15 through March 12 and found that attendance had declined 13.7 percent from Feb. 19 through March 12, compared with the previous four-week period.
Barak Realty Open House Report
During the 1st quarter, average open house attendance for most recent four weeks (2/19 – 3/12/2006) was 13.7% lower than previous four weeks (1/15 – 2/5/2006.) As yet another sign of the slowing market, apartments are staying on the market for longer periods, and buyers are shopping with lower intensity.
Take the report with a grain of salt as almost no information was given on sample set size, areas and price ranges covered, etc. Unfortunately, I don’t believe any local realtors are doing anything similar, if so that data has not been made public.
Caveat Emptor!
Grim
Grim:
Learn about economics from a Hoboken Realtor.
She also posts aggregated MLS figures.
http://judymarcianos.blogspot.com/2006/03/supply-drives-demand.html
I don’t know if I have enough expletives in my vocabulary to respond to her market analysis.
I can’t even comment on that piece. I don’t know if I simply lack the words to describe that analysis, or that I’ve actually become dumber having read it…
grim
The Bernanke speech tonight was interesting, albeit non-committal. I heard it driving home from work on Bloomberg.
Essentially, he listed off all the reason why the back-end of the yield curve hasn’t moved after 14 tightenings.
His whole set-up was a rather basic description of the term structure of interest rates. It was kind of shocking in my opinion given his audience, but most importantly, it gave him an excuse to talk for 15 of the 30 minutes and SAY NOTHING. A good strategy.
As was expected, the Q&A was the most interesting part.
Ultimately, he doesn’t sound that worried about the housing bubble. He stated that he thought, on the whole, the U.S. public was better off due to housing appreciation as their net worth has been increased.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/speeches/2006/20060320/default.htm
Chi Town said,
Ultimately, he doesn’t sound that worried about the housing bubble. He stated that he thought, on the whole, the U.S. public was better off due to housing appreciation as their net worth has been increased.
That is the party line right now. Paul Snow said something eerily similar to describe the eaverage american. But Snow went further and said something about increased savings and we know that is not true. I guess Ben only got the first page of the talking points for this week.
Alot of MEW making consumers feel wealthy. Wait for the hangover.
It’s clear that the more concentrated an area gets with residential housing, the more valuable the housing becomes (ie.NYC).
WTF is she saying. She used to be a VP at Donna Karan it shows in her analysis?
In grad school I almost got sucked into a project where RE prices and the geography of a place were going to be analyzed. I.E. Water around the city, mountains, nice climate. Never did see the results. But I can tell you it is not that density is what makes an area desirable. It is the desirability that makes it dense.
More doom and gloom from Jim Hughes. He describes a hostile state tax environment for business and the decline in high paying tech jobs.
When I worked in site location anlysis, the industry would routinely cross NJ off of the list unless it was overwhelmiingly advantageous to locate here.
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060321/BUSINESS/603210320/1003/NEWS02
I’m going to be scouring the newswires for information on the Corzine budget, I’ll post up details as soon as I see something.
jb
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I have personally looked at a lot of space in NYC. While most of the numbers dont really show anything more than sideways price movement, the seat-o-the-pants meter indicates that this post is correct. There is very little pressure to get your moeny down on a unit- which it much different than a year ago.
On the rental side, things arent terrible, rents have gone up a bit, but still you can take a little time to decide.
BubbleTrack.blogspot.com
As far as the fed, you might want to go back and read the minutes of thier meetings. They do know that there’s a bubble.
Dont listen to these speeches. Look for what they do. And.. the next rates meeting is coming up soon.
BubbleTrack.blogspot.com
RE: Open House Attendance
We’ve just stopped going.
We already know the prices as listed online, so there’s not much to see/talk about in-person with the prices so far out in the stratosphere…
Let them rot.
I’ll just keep watching the nice interest payments roll in from the savings account…
At this rate, with the interest subsidy, we’ll be living rent free at some point…
grim,
I’m not sure if it us that got dumber or is it her piece that is so dumb we can’t understand it. Following her “economics” (and I’m using this term very loosely) the more cars (and car manufacturers) we have the more expensive they become. Same with electronics, food, entertainment…etc etc. What a pile of garbage.
great audio interview of the guy who released the book”The Second Great Depression” snip:The Second Great Depression is a frightening book. It shows how massive consumer debt will trigger the next depression, starting about the year 2007. Most of the logic used to support this premise is based on the government’s own published data.
link:
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Brussee.html