{"id":698786,"date":"2010-03-23T11:04:29","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T15:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21005541"},"modified":"2010-03-23T11:04:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T15:04:29","slug":"housing-limps-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/698786","title":{"rendered":"Housing limps along"},"content":{"rendered":"

TWO pieces of housing data are out this morning, and neither is very comforting. First, we have existing home sales<\/a>, which fell in February for a third consecutive month. Home sales hit their lowest level in eight months. Weak sales have had the expected effect on inventory and months of housing supply:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Bloated inventories place downward pressure on prices. Right on schedule, we have the latest data release from the Federal Housing Finance Agency<\/a>, which reported a second consecutive montly price decline, of 0.6%, in January. December’s decline was larger than originally reported at 2.0%. For the big picture, have a look at this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What you see there is decline, arrested last year with some significant help from the Federal Reserve and Congress’ homebuyer tax credit, now resuming. The FHFA index is subject to some composition bias, as it doesn’t follow the Case-Shiller methodology of using sale pairs, but the general trend for Case-Shiller has been similar: decline, followed by a period of increases, and then a leveling off (and, in some markets, a return to decline).<\/p>\n

It’s a little disconcerting. Fed purchases of mortgage-backed securities are basically over with, and the housing tax credit will expire at the end of April. There is a real question as to whether housing markets can avoid another round of decline without government help. And there is another question: whether broader recovery can survive a new period of declining home prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TWO pieces of housing data are out this morning, and neither is very comforting. First, we have existing home sales, which fell in February for a third consecutive month. Home sales hit their lowest level in eight months. Weak sales have had the expected effect on inventory and months of housing supply: Bloated inventories place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2918,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2VMK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2918"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}