Has Ardell finally found her rosy glasses?
or may be the market has really rurned corner.
Over past couple of weeks Ardell has posted some stats over at RCG that I think are twisiting an abvious seasonal bump in pending sales and price per SQFT.
Here are the posts I am referring to:
http://www.raincityguide.com/2009/03/15 ... improving/
http://www.raincityguide.com/2009/03/08 ... timulated/
What do you folks think? Is the market picking up? I read through some of the comments and checked the stats Tim posted and this does seem like a natural spring phenomenon to me.
Over past couple of weeks Ardell has posted some stats over at RCG that I think are twisiting an abvious seasonal bump in pending sales and price per SQFT.
Here are the posts I am referring to:
http://www.raincityguide.com/2009/03/15 ... improving/
http://www.raincityguide.com/2009/03/08 ... timulated/
What do you folks think? Is the market picking up? I read through some of the comments and checked the stats Tim posted and this does seem like a natural spring phenomenon to me.
Comments
The rules for RE boosterism are simple: When the year-over-year stats look bad, discuss month-over-month stats. Or vice-versa. When the local stats look bad, discuss national stats. Or vice-versa. When pricing stats look bad, discuss volume stats. Or vice-versa. If all the stats are bad, talk about "open house traffic" and other vague impressions that aren't tracked statistically. In short, always talk about things you can give a positive spin.
have 2 points, must have line!
Wait unitl next week when it is up $25, and then the one after that when it is down by $50.
Statistics is not a strong point of RCG
There's some sort of line about forests and trees that may be applicable here...
I'm not even going to begin to get into it with her about the use of the word "improving" to describe increasing prices. Is it "improvement" when gas prices go up? What about when food prices go up?
Why, just last September he and his team were openly mocking John McCain for declaring that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong," but this week Obama is out there talking up the "fundamentally sound aspects of our economy," while his Chief Economist Christina Romer answered the question (on MSNBC's Meet the Press) of "Are the fundamentals of this economy sound?" with a resounding "Of course the fundamentals are sound!"
Disclaimer: I'm by no means a McCain fan. I'm just amused by Obama's blatant political backspeak. I didn't vote for either of them.
I like the part in the referenced post where Ardell casually mentions that her "Sunday Night Stats" posts aren't much to do with numbers, it's more about how she feels about stuff. Important clarification! Glad we cleared that up.
Since I'm not a licensed agent, I do not have access to the MLS and their stats so my reference point is a sample of real estate agents from mostly King County. Some of these agents work Snohomish and Pierce but arrive in King Co for their classes. This week alone I will have interacted with over 200 agents.
I'm hearing that there is lots of buyer activity but the buyers aren't necessarily making offers.
I'm hearing that short sale transactions are a bear to close and some aren't closing at all for a wide variety of reasons which I can list if anyone's interested.
I'm hearing that in the upper end price range such as from 500,000 to beyond 1 mil in Kirkland and on the eastside, that there is way too much inventory and short sales are starting to bleed into this upper end price range on the eastside and Mercer Island.
I'm hearing that in all areas, the percentage of distressed property inventory which I identify as short sales and/or REOs is climbing each month, in all areas. South King and North Pierce, Snohomish, and the Eastside. Now I'm starting to hear this about North Seattle.
I'm hearing that homeowners with short sale listings who actually have the money to pay back the shortfall are deciding to go ahead and let the bank foreclose instead of having to admit to the bank that they have assets (and could pay back the short fall.)
This isn't just from one agent here and there but widespread, throughout the classes.
FWIW, I also did not vote for either M or O.
The Romer quote is quite the about-face. I've heard about this story, but I haven't been able to find an actual Obama quote that actually rang hypocritical to me. The closest I could find was :
What's unclear to me, at this point, is whether or not Romer's quote was something the president wanted her to say or if he was more covering for her.
There was activity in the housing sector yesterday; applications for building permits were up. So we are rolling again. The banking industry is making low interest loans and refinancing properties.
Along with that good news we had Citi posting a profit. Our government is going after AIG and there is action in the economy.
I'm wondering, after taking a tour of Real Estate blogs why this blog is the only one resisting all of that good news? The conclusion that I came to is that this SeattleBubble blog has become the best source of information about Real Estate.
You'll see other blogs ramping up the hype, which they should, they are advertising for services, and lead generating. A lot of consumers are going to want the good news, it is the power of positive thinking.
I'm wondering though about those millions of vacant housing units. How did banks get on such a solid footing so quickly? oh yeah, it was the bail out money. Lastly there seems to be a complete disregard lately for some disturbing news from across our border in Mexico, along with Iraq, North Korea, and Afghanistan.
It was Bill Clinton who suggested just a couple of weeks ago that the Obama camp should be more positive and a couple of weeks later it's all good news.
Citi DID NOT post a profit. Their CEO stated that their monthly operations for Jan and Feb were profitable, However, at the end of Q1 (Mar 31) they will have to write down all the CDS losses, all the foreclosed property losses, all the short sale losses... and post another huge quarterly loss.
The best news I've seen in 2009 is that a few categories (housing starts, retail sales) didn't fall quite as far as expected in February. Hardly something to get excited about...
And the government is going after AIG to the tune of $165 million, which 0.1% of their total bail-out (so far)
Yeah saying that "we have seen profit in the first two months" is not exactly meaning "this quarter will be profittable". Of course for some people it is.
Lots of positive things with banks marking down their assets in mass, a Vulcan deal with a local bank for 20 cents on the dollar.
You gotta love it when banks are asking you to please please please buy this piece from us for 1999 prices.
Mostly, I think the people on this blog possess a grasp of how the real world works. In the news cycle, if the stock market is up 2% one morning it's good news. But how meaningful is that? Not only is that 2% not predictive (it went up 2% so we're on an up trend), it's not even indicative of the current situation (the markets are up 2%, so the nations net worth gained 2% this morning).
So, when we see a week of mixed news, which is interpreted as good news due to the fact it's not all explicitly bad news, we on Seattle Bubble are a little slower to make bold proclamations about how the entire market has changed. Well, most of us anyways.
FWIW, most of the "good" news is decidedly not good and probably not news. We have excess supply of housing, how is an increase in building good news? Citi announced they aren't losing money on operations - operations that consist of charging people money to touch their money. I don't even know how a bank can be unprofitable using Citi's new definition of profitability. And our congresspersons are spending time chasing AIG for $165M as a diversion to the $169,835M that is flowing out their doors?
The stock market has been up a bit in March. So, if you're the kind of person who things that means anything at all, I guess that's legitimately good news...unless it goes back down again.
Is she trolling? Because if she is I gotta hand it to her...
"Yeah but has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?"
Or maybe he was just drunk posting. There's always a disturbing amount of talk about wine on Sunday Night Stats.
Let's just pretended all the worlds markets began working in perfect harmony again in the middle of February like Ardell seems to believe. If Obama's prowess caused all markets to recover from what looked like the worst recession in 80 years after less than 30 days in office, who could possibly blame him for the bottom? I mean, even Limbaugh would be forced to admit something miraculous had happened and that Obama was in the middle of it.