Larry Yun, the latest lying douchebag chief economist from the NAR, declared that May will be the low point for housing. If I had a few hours, I could go back to every monthly report from these lying sacks of shit since 2005 and find a quote from David Lereah or this numbskull declaring a bottom in housing. I guess their million dollar salaries allows them to look in the mirror every morning without puking at how they’ve sold out and willingly lie on a daily basis. Yun actually declared that home sales declined due to high gas prices and bad weather. I know when I was deciding to buy a house, the weather that month was a major factor in my decision.
Existing home sales are at 1998 levels. Home sales hardly ever drop from April to May because people buy houses at this time of the year so their kids can get settled before school starts. One third of all the sales are distressed sales. Prices continue to fall. Housing is an absolute disaster even with mortgage rates at 1950 levels. Imagine how well housing will do when mortgage rates hit 8%. I’m sure Larry the shill Yun will be spinning the higher interest rates as a positive and calling another housing bottom.
Check out this article from Larry Perma-Bull Kudlow from 2005 when he was yammering about the strong housing market. What a total douchebag.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/214729/housing-bears-are-wrong-again/larry-kudlow
U.S. Existing-Home Sales Hit Six-Month Low
Sales of existing U.S. homes decreased in May to the lowest level in six months, a sign that the housing market is lagging other parts of the economy.
Purchases of existing homes fell 3.8 percent to a 4.81 million annual pace last month, in line with the 4.8 million median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, data from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. The median sales price declined from a year earlier and 31 percent of transactions were of distressed dwellings.
An unemployment rate hovering around 9 percent and tight credit standards mean it may take years to absorb the 1.8 million distressed properties on the market that are weighing down home values. Persistent weakness in the housing market is one reason why Federal Reserve policy makers are likely to maintain record stimulus when they meet this week.
“The latest housing data have been pretty dismal,” Aaron Smith, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania, said before the report. “The end of price declines are key” to boosting demand, and “until we get confidence back it’s going to be slow going,” he said.
Estimates for home sales ranged from 4.5 million to 5.18 million, according to the median of 69 forecasts in the Bloomberg survey. Purchases reached a record 7.08 million in 2005, and slumped to a 13-year low of 4.91 million last year.
Cash Transactions
Of all purchases, cash transactions accounted for about 30 percent, NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun said in a news conference today as the figures were released. The Realtors group began tracking the monthly figure in August 2008, and the share on a yearly basis before that was around 10 percent, Yun has said.
Distressed sales, which comprise foreclosures and short sales, in which the lender agrees to a transaction for less than the balance of the mortgage, accounted for a smaller share of the total in May than in recent months because the market for non-distressed properties is usually stronger during this time of year, Yun said.
May sales will probably turn out to be “the low point of the year,” Yun said in the press conference. Pending sales, which are based on contract signings, look to be up around 15 percent for May, Yun said based on incomplete data. The report is due next week.
Existing-home sales decreased in three of four regions in May, led by a 6.4 percent drop in the Midwest.
The median sales price fell 4.6 percent last month from May 2010 to $166,500.
Months’ Supply
The number of previously owned homes on the market fell to 3.72 million in May from 3.76 million the previous month. At the current sales pace, it would take 9.3 months to sell those houses, compared with 9 months at the end of April. Supply in the eight months to nine months range is consistent with stable home prices, the group has said.
The 1.8 million of inventory of distressed homes nationwide would take about three years to sell at the current pace, Daren Blomquist, communications manager at RealtyTrac Inc., said last week.
Competition from existing homes selling at discounted prices is hurting builders. Sales of new properties dropped 5.3 percent in May to a 306,000 annual pace, economists said ahead of a June 23 report from the Commerce Department. A record-low 323,000 new homes were sold last year.
“We still see housing demand at very weak levels,” Bill Wheat, chief financial officer at D.R. Horton Inc. the second- largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue, said last month at a housing conference in New York. “It could still be a struggle in 2012.”
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has been among those forecasting that the recent slowdown in growth will prove temporary as commodity prices retreat. At the same time, the central bank should maintain record stimulus to bolster a “frustratingly slow” recovery, he said this month. Officials are scheduled to meet in Washington today and tomorrow to determine the course of policy.
Administrator says:
Market Surges After Existing Home Sales Drop, Print At 4.81MM On Expectations Of 4.80MM
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/21/2011 10:06 -0400
More lies from the discredited, conflicted and data manipulating NAR which for some stunning reason continues to move the market, even more paradoxically after the existing home sales number came at 4.81 million on expectations of 4.80 million: if there ever was a Gargantuan beat of expectations, this is it. But courtesy of a prior downward revision which took down the April number from 5.05 million to 5.00 million, the decline was 3.8% instead of the expected 5.0%. Total housing inventory at the end of May fell 1.0 percent to 3.72 million existing homes available for sale, which represents a 9.3-month supply4 at the current sales pace, up from a 9.0-month supply in April. Somehow this sends futures up nearly half a percent. And from the master of mendacity, the one and only Larry Yun, the weakness was due to “Spiking gasoline prices along with widespread severe weather hurt house shopping in April, leading to soft figures for actual closings in May.” Obviously there is never a simple explanation for deteriorating economic data such as people don’t actually have money…
NAR lies continue:
Existing-home sales were down in May as temporary factors and financing problems weighed on the market, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Existing-home sales1, which are completed transactions that include single-family, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, fell 3.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.81 million in May from a downwardly revised 5.00 million in April, and are 15.3 percent below a 5.68 million pace in May 2010 when sales were surging to beat the deadline for the home buyer tax credit.
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said temporary factors held back the market in May, as implied from prior data on contract signings. “Spiking gasoline prices along with widespread severe weather hurt house shopping in April, leading to soft figures for actual closings in May,” he said. “Current housing market activity indicates a very slow pace of broader economic activity, but recent reversals in oil prices are likely to mitigate the impact going forward. The pace of sales activity in the second half of the year is expected to be stronger than the first half, and will be much stronger than the second half of last year.”
Yun said the market also is being constrained by the lending community. “Even with recent economic softness, this is a disappointing performance with home sales being held back by overly restrictive loan underwriting standards,” he said. “There’s been a pendulum swing from very loose standards which led to the housing boom to unnecessarily restrictive practices as an overreaction to the housing correction – this overreaction is clearly holding back the recovery.”
There were notable regional differences in home sales. “A large decline in Midwestern existing-home sales can be attributed partly to the flooding and other severe weather patterns that occurred, but this also implies a temporary nature of soft market activity,” Yun explained.
The national median existing-home price2 for all housing types was $166,500 in May, down 4.6 percent from May 2010. Distressed homes3 – typically sold at a discount of about 20 percent – accounted for 31 percent of sales in May, down from 37 percent in April; they were 31 percent in May 2010.
“The price decline could be diminishing, as buyers recognize great bargain prices and the highest affordability conditions in 40 years; this will help mitigate further price drops,” Yun said.
“Home prices are rising or very stable in local markets with improved employment conditions, such as in North Dakota, Alaska, Washington, D.C., and many parts of Texas,” Yun noted.
Much more bullshit at the soure.
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21st June 2011 at 10:55 am
StuckInNJ says:
Shoot this motherfucker on sight. (Also, NEVER buy USA Today.)
.
Don’t be fooled. Lawrence Yun in disguise.
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21st June 2011 at 11:07 am
Fiat's Fire says:
Excellent write up. You covered all of the key points. I would like to add that an article in the NYT said NY state has upwards of 62 years of housing backlog at the current rate. Of course that’s not entirely accurate because of the current data set. Using the more accurate historical average would make it 12+ years. Still, there is a very long way to go and a lot can happen before then, like the economy imploding.
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21st June 2011 at 11:09 am
Administrator says:
I’ve added a list of choice quotes from the NAR from 2005 to 2007.
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21st June 2011 at 11:18 am
Administrator says:
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21st June 2011 at 11:19 am
Administrator says:
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21st June 2011 at 11:21 am
Administrator says:
Mr. Lereah, who says he left NAR voluntarily, says he was pressured by executives to issue optimistic forecasts — then was left to shoulder the blame when things went sour. “I was there for seven years doing everything they wanted me to,” he said, looking out his window to his tree-filled yard in this Washington suburb. Mr. Lereah now works at home, trying to rebuild his career and saddled with a sagging portfolio of real-estate investments.
A spokesman for NAR says Mr. Lereah used the same kind of forecasts in his book, which wasn’t an NAR publication.
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21st June 2011 at 11:25 am
Administrator says:
From Lance Roberts Of Streettalk Advisors
Existing Home Sales Reflect Balance Sheet Recession
In yesterday’s post on the “Implications Of Household Debt Deleveraging” we outlined the fact that the consumer is working their way through a debt deleveraging cycle. In other words, the last 30 years of Keynesian economic policy has led to the culmination of malinvestment that consumers are now struggling with.
Not surprising existing home sales for May fell to 4.81 million units which is now resuming it’s downtrend after brief upticks that were caused by government incentive programs that dragged forward future existing home sales. As the consumer has begun to deleverage their household balance sheet both new and existing home sales have decreased. High unemployment, concerns about current employment, stagnant wage growth and uncertainty about future economic conditions weigh on the consumptive attitudes of the consumer.
Year over year the rate of existing home sales has declined to a negative 15.3% from April’s negative 13.8%. Supply on the market, at 3.72 million, is falling but not enough relative to the decline in sales as months supply rose to 9.3 months vs April’s 9.0 months. This supply of existing homes has a broad range of effects on the housing market as it also dampens new home sales as prices of existing homes are lowered to get them sold.
The other ominous cloud for the housing market is the huge inventory of existing homes that are currently delinquent or in the stalled process of foreclosure. As these homes ultimately hit the market not only will that drive existing home prices lower it will create a further fallout of strategic defaults by homeowners that give up hope of ever getting back to even on their properties.
The NAR believes, and continues to hope, that May will prove to be the year’s bottom for the housing sector. They will be wrong as they were last year as well, oh, and the year before as the balance sheet recession continues and consumers hunker down to regain stability in a weak economic environment that will continue to plague the housing market for some time to come.
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21st June 2011 at 12:10 pm
IGOR says:
He is full of shit! I have been been an appraiser for 28 years and since September 2008 I have been working a night shift at FedEX loading trailers to make ends meet. My appraisal work load keeps dropping as are housing prices and there is no end in sight.
ps This is in New Jersey not Las Vegas
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21st June 2011 at 12:36 pm
Hope@ZeroKelvin says:
Christ on a crutch! A Ouija board would be more accurate!
I am not in the RE business but I can certainly tell you that all my patients in anything remotely related to the housing industry are hurting big time.
How can these lying sacks of shit keep a job with that kind of performance?
Probably educated at Haaarrvarrd, the Bastion of Head of The Ass Economic Theories, sheesh.
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21st June 2011 at 1:44 pm
King-Shat says:
That graph says one thing, lower highs and lower lows.
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21st June 2011 at 2:17 pm
Administrator says:
LARRY LARRY LARRY
NAR economist Lawrence Yun said: “There’s been a pendulum swing from very loose standards which led to the housing boom to unnecessarily restrictive practices as an overreaction to the housing correction – this overreaction is clearly holding back the recovery.”
Actually standards are fairly reasonable for qualified buyers. Of course many qualified buyers bought last year – using the ill-considered homebuyer tax credit – and that pulled demand forward. The housing market is still paying the price for that policy mistake.
Of course the NAR never complained about the “very loose standards” during the housing bubble!
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21st June 2011 at 3:12 pm
Realtors Are Liars® says:
These people are such insidious corrupt liars. It’s stunning.
Hello blog owner my friend whoever you are.
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21st June 2011 at 10:47 pm
Mary Malone says:
Yes, real estate is in the tank for all the reasons stated, but we can’t discount fraud from the equation.
People are not idiots. Well not all of us anyway…
They read stories and watch segments on the news that talk about mortgage and foreclosure fraud. They experience the lies firsthand from banks – or hear about their friends and families to modify their loan to no avail.
They see values continue to fall – why on earth would anyone purchase a home in this climate if they didn’t have to?
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21st June 2011 at 11:05 pm
Nemo says:
Sold my home in Texas for $200,000 in 2005 – probably at a loss – because I didn’t like the comments I was reading about a “Bubble in Housing”.
Bought gold with the money.
I sleep well at night. Just my story – but I don’t know nothin’.
Nemo
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21st June 2011 at 5:42 pm
Anonymous says:
[...] Ivy League schools and a track record of unquestioned accuracy as we can see in the chart below? NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS CALLS HOUSING BOTTOM FOR THE 363rd TIME SINCE 2005 Mr. Lereah added to his sterling reputation with his insightful prescient book Why the Real [...]
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21st June 2011 at 3:20 am