More bad news for this housing market, will Livermore follow?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales of new homes dropped more than expected in June, while orders for long-lasting U.S.-made goods were weaker than analysts thought, according to reports on Thursday that raised fresh concerns about economy.

This particular news has been taunting the bay area, when will we see an end to this saga?

I feel that until the foreclosures start to slow down to normal levels and the stock market sees investors putting money in bank and mortgage securities we are in this for a while.

The good news is that Livermore has seen the levels of pricing stay reasonably unchanged. Although the prices have fallen they have fallen at a level way below our surrounding cities. Stay tuned to see where we will be headed come winter. The buyer's market continues!!

Livermore should eye national news, makes last post relevant

TIME FOR A HOUSING CHECK-UP (livermore real estate although individual, should be poised for investment based on National Data)

The health of the housing sector is due for a check-up in the form of new figures on sales of both new and existing homes.
On Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors will report on sales of existing homes in June. According to the consensus in a Reuters poll of economists, sales fell to a
5.87-million-unit annual rate from 5.99 million in May.
The following day, the Commerce Department issues a report on new home sales. The consensus view is for an annual rate of 895,000 in June, which would be down from 915,000 in May.
The housing sector has been a concern to investors as subprime mortgages sold to less credit-worthy borrowers have experienced rising defaults. Some hedge funds with investments in securities linked to the mortgages have had huge losses.
"One of the things that has puzzled us is that with the weakness seen in housing, the jobs picture has remained so strong," said Schaeffer of Becker Capital Management, which has $2.7 billion in assets under management.
Schaeffer said a lot of the jobs created from 2003 to 2006 were associated with a booming housing sector, so for employment to hold up while housing is in a slump seems to be "a little bit of a disconnect."
In addition to the report on new home sales on Thursday, other data that day includes durable goods orders. According to the median forecast in the Reuters poll, orders rose 1.8 percent last month after May's revised drop of 2.4 percent.
Schaeffer said while some improvement in durable goods orders is to be expected after the May decline, Caterpillar's problems, in part due to weak sales, could cause expectations to be scaled back somewhat. Durable goods are washing machines, refrigerators and other big-ticket items expected to last three years or more.
Friday will bring the first report on how the U.S. economy did in the second quarter of 2007. A rebound to an annual growth rate of 3.2 percent is forecast after a dismal pace of just 0.7 percent in the first quarter.
A final July reading of consumer sentiment will come out on Friday in a report from the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers

My readers should stay tuned to see where these reports fall and how it will effect our local Livermore real estate market and Livermore home sales as well.
(Source Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday on deepening concerns that a crisis in lending could spread and a warning from the Federal Reserve chairman that weakness in housing could hurt economic growth for some time.

How will this concern your Livermore home? How does this effect your Livermore real estate prices. Is this a good time to buy a Livermore home? Is the market going to fall more? Which Livermore Realtor has the best chance to sell your home?

No one knows the answer to any of these questions.

What I can tell all my readers is that usually when the stock market is doing well (which it is), the housing market suffers to some extent. The key thing to do to enable yourself positioned for prosperity is to diversify yourself as equal as possible in real Estate and the Stock Market.

If you have enough equity in your home it doesn't hurt to invest some of it in the Stock Market, just like if you have enjoyed profit in your stock market holdings recently, it wouldn't hurt to pull some of that money out and get involved in this "Buyer's market."

There are specific strategies that you can target that paints a clearer picture of what I just described, feel free to contact me for more info.

Livermore loses some inventory, that is a good thing!

As of 7/9/07 at 1130 hours Livermore has 498 houses on the market, 91 houses are pending, so lets do the math together.

Of the 498 house available, roughly 18.5% of them are pending, giving us a market time of about 5 months. This is better news than two months ago but hardly good news. This basically means that the average house will take 5 months to sell in Livermore.

Nothing too crazy with options other then price your house right and it has the best chance of selling.

The good news is however, that interest rates have crept downward in the past couple of weeks making it an even better time to buy a home.