Thursday, February 26, 2009

Good News?
Here is a Bloomberg article that states that California home sales doubled in January from a year earlier as buyers took advantage of a 41% drop in median home prices. After reading the article, I am not sure of the timing of the price drop, whether it's from the peak or year-over-year from January. Half of the sales were foreclosures. Most impressive too me are these two points:

January was the first month since October 2005 that the seasonally adjusted, annualized sales rate passed 600,000 in the state, the California Association of Realtors said today. The time needed to deplete the supply of homes on the market at the current sales pace dropped to 6.7 months from 16.6 months a year earlier.

The median number of days it took to sell a single-family home in California was 49.9 last month, down from 70.8 a year ago, the association said.

California was the first state to see the housing bubble start to burst - August 2005 - so maybe it will be the first where it bottoms out. Fast sales time and shrinking inventory are good signs.

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