Housing Sales Partay!

According to the National Association of Realtors, housing sales are ahead of January 2009.

 Woo Hoo!

But before we head out to partay, let's take a look at a few other National real estate stats, shall we?  The picture we see, is not so pretty.

* Existing homes, in large part, are made up of foreclosed properties selling at vastly reduced   rates.

* On a month to month basis, sales of those existing homes actually fell in January by 7.2 percent.

* Applications for mortgages have tumbled, dropping (last week) to the lowest level in 13 years.

* The sale of new homes reached its lowest levels since 1963!

* The commercial real estate sector seems poised to implode any month now, with large numbers of commercial properties valued below their mortgage balance.

and looking ahead -

* The tax credit for first time home buyers is set to expire soon (the credit applies to sales occurring on or before April 30th. But, in cases where a binding sales contract is signed by that date, a home purchase completed by June 30th will still qualify for the credit).

* Fannie Mae has reported a loss of $16.3 billion for the fourth quarter and is asking the U.S. Treasury (translation: taxpayers) for another $15.3 billion to continue its operations. That brings the total going Fannie's way from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers to $76.2 billion with no end in sight.

* The federal government has signaled its desire to stop buying up all those mortgage-backed securities which have kept mortgage loan interest rates artificially depressed. If homes aren't selling now, when mortgage rates are still historically low (at least by post-Word War II standards) what happens when the rates jump up to above 6 or 6 and a half percent on a 30-year fixed rate?

bottom line - Many economists (including me) say no meaningful economic recovery will happen until the real estate market in the United States fully rebounds. We are sooooooooo far away from that, it's not even funny.