Housing Market Updates

Everyone is asking the questions  "How is the housing market fairing these days, and what are the trends for the future?"  Those are always good questions to which one would like to know the answer, especially the latter. So, with that in mind, I searched for some interesting tidbits on the National Association of Realtors' site. NAR has a weekly update on the economic indicators and publish this on Facebook. In their latest release, here are some interesting facts – some of them one would expect. For instance, new mortgage applications and purchase contracts have fallen in May. This is most likely due to the surge in applications through April 30th. Sales of furniture and home improvement products have increased in May while overall consumer spending has gone down some, a possible secondary effect of the tax credit legislation. But here is an interesting piece of information from this week's report.  The number of buyers that may not get the tax credit due to failure to close by the 30th of June deadline because of an excessive workload is estimated to be as high as 180,000 nationally. The number is so large that legislators are pushing a bill to extend the closing date deadline to the 30th of September. Short sales seem to be playing a part in this. No one is sure how this is going to affect the market. Interesting trivia? Certainly. Economic trends? Maybe. While the overall sentiment and data are pointing to an interesting time ahead, there seems to be one constant over the years in economic cycles. The economy recovers when everyone thinks there is a recovery brewing.