Ana Connell

Month to month average sale price is down $45,281, year over year, average sale prices are down by $150,000 or 22.83%.

Average days on market, year over year are up 27 days.

Number of sales is up 16%.

These numbers are reflecting several factors……

• Year over year, you have many more short sales and REO or bank owned properties on the market.

• For comparable properties the bank owned properties tend to be priced lower than the short sales or regular sales reflecting the fact that the bank owned properties need more repairs.

• The fact that days on market are longer makes sense when you consider that negotiations tend to take much longer with short sales and bank owned properties.

• Sales are up because prices are becoming more affordable and buyers are seeing good deals.
  

Qualified buyers are out there as I’m seeing multiple offer situations on well priced properties. This is all a function of market stabilization. While I'm not sure that we've hit bottom I think we're close. We won't really know until we look back a year from now.

For more information, check out Burbank Foreclosures and Short Sales or Burbank Real Estate Expert.

* Leading Indicators, inched up .1% trying to suggest that the economy will not officially dip into a recession.(Monday)

* Producer Price Index .2% increase seems tame following the 1.1% surge last month. (Tuesday)

* FOMC Meeting Minutes the Fed lowered it’s forecast for economic growth and indicated that it was pausing in it’s interest rate strategy for a while. They believe that while growth is contracting in the first half of 2008 it will rebound in the latter half of the year.(Wednesday)

* Jobless Claims came in at 365K which seems to suggest a stabilization in the jobs market.(Thursday)

* Exisiting Home Sales dropped by 1% in April and inventories rose from a supply of 10 months to 11.2 months.(Friday)

* Bonds…2 year 2.45%, 5 yr. 3.15% and the 10 yr. 3.85%….so far as market has not closed on the day yet, but will close early for the Memorial Day Holiday.

* Crude oil has been the big story this week hitting record highs, right now it’s sitting at $132.82 per barrel, below the record of $135 it hit yesterday.

Of note this past week:

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Here is the report for April and as you can see sales can vary greatly by area.

One thing is clear, however, money is still tight and sales are down. Latest forecasts have the turnaround starting later this year and into 2009. The recovery does hinge on access to loans and in many cases buyers are not qualifying under the current banking standards. A record 62% of banks reported tighter lending standards for prime mortgages and 72% have tighted subprime mortgage requirements(no surprise here).

Fixed mortgage rates are expected to rise to 6.2% later this year and 6.3% for 2009.

To keep things in perspective.....home prices in Los Angeles/Long Beach/Orange County areas increased 6.2% over the last 5 years.

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* Pending Homes Index fell 1% in March and is looking to be coming in at 20% year over year declines. Again the real story is when you look at specific markets. For example the Northeast did better, up 12.5%, so these numbers are somewhat meaningless unless you are looking for an overall trend, which currently is still down. Individual neighborhoods can be an entirely different story depending on where you are looking and at what price range. Tight money is still in play which means buyers are still finding it difficult to obtain loans.(Wednesday)

* Jobless Claims, came in at 365,000, lower than last week.

Chain Store Sales reported the best numbers since January, good news for retailers.

* Bank of England (BOE) Announcement, as expected came in at maintaining it’s key rate at 5%. The message here is that it still sees inflation as a real threat. * International Trade -The US trade balance shrank, which is good news for the dollar. Only bad news here is that less imports points to a weak economy.(Friday)

* Bonds…2 year 2.22%, 5 yr. 2.95% and the 10 yr. 3.76%.

* Crude oil finished at $125.96 per barrel, and some are now predicting $200 per barrel by Christmas.

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• Retail Sales came in +.2%, better than the unchanged number they were expecting. Given that most of this increase came from sales at gas stations, I’m not really sure how you can put a positive spin on it. Business Inventories came in as expected at .6%. Many were hoping to see these shrink as it would indicate consumers are doing more buying.(Monday)

• Producer Price Index the markets were excited without food and energy it only rose .2%, with food and energy it rose by a stellar 1.1%, but really folks, I think it’s time we start looking at the entire picture. Housing Market Index was unchanged at 20, which would point to some stabilization in the housing market.(Tuesday)

• Consumer Price Index came in as expected. Housing Starts both starts and permits weakened, starts, down 11.9% for the month and down 36.5% year over year, posted one of their weakest readings since the 1991 recession. Building Permits, fell 5.8%. Industrial Productionwas slightly higher than expected.(Wednesday)

• Jobless Claims, came in at 372,000, a bleak reading for the overall economy as job strength will be a key component to a recovery. Leading Indicators came in at .1% giving rise to the notion that the economy is just flat and not in a recession. Given the overall picture I’m not sure I would agree with this assessment. I think it’s a very subjective picture depending on where you live or how you have been personally impacted by $4 per gallon gas, job losses, foreclosures etc. (Thursday)

• Bonds…2 year 2.13%, 5 yr. 2.89% and the 10 yr. 3.70%, quite a bit higher than last week.
• Crude oil finished at $116.75 per barrel.

Wow, great gains for stocks this week following a spate of dismal earnings reports from financial institutions. Citigroup announced a $5.1 billion dollar loss and is cutting 9,000 more jobs, but because this was not as bad as some analysts were predicting, the market rallied.

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