Real estate market remains red hot

Perhaps more important than the actual numbers – which show a continuing recovery in home prices and sales – is the tone of commentary on the announcements.

The headline above was the Associated Press’s headline of a story about this week’s data for existing home sales.
Read Article to see the data

The New York Times, referring to single family housing starts, used “Housing, ailing for years, start to recuperate”
Read article

The Wharton Public Policy Initiative pointed out that “Housing starts to Give Promising News for Economic Recovery”
Read article

A broader view was expressed by Kurt Pfotenhauer, vice chairman of First American Title Insurance Company: “With the understanding that there are still a lot of uncertainties in the regulatory arena, it looks like we are finally seeing the beginning of what could be a broad and deep recovery of the nation’s housing market.”

While the recovery in single family starts is encouraging the following table shows that starts are still way below the levels of the past, and also well below new household formation.

I heard somebody describe the housing market today as a perfect storm of low prices and low interest rates. As previous posts have demonstrated, that news is rapidly transferring into active competition for well-priced homes as they hit the market – or before!