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Showing posts from March 31, 2009

More on Current Market Conditions - not there yet

I have been thinking - and reading - a lot lately about the price disparities between REO transactions and "conventional" closings. To recap, even with overall declining market prices, sellers (and the professionals they hire to help them sell) need to recognize the gap in prices between sales of bank-owned properties and sales for everyone else. Here are two more indicators of where we are and how far we may still need to travel. First, the monthly bad news report from Standard & Poors ; the monthly Case-Schiller index. You will see this one in all the newspapers, and broadcast news reports. No doubt scores of bloggers will talk this one too death too. Prices were down from a year ago January in all 20 metro areas tracked by the S&P/Case- Shiller Home Price Indices, with 13 of those markets seeing the steepest rates of decline since the downturn began. The three worst-performing markets in terms of annual declines were Phoenix (down 35 percent), Las Vegas (down