Richmond-area home sales rise, prices drop

Home sales rose in part due to the $8000.00 tax credit being given to first time buyers. 
When there are no more government give away programs, will there be more sub-prime mortgages on over inflated houses pushed through by companys like Countrywide Mortgage?
The greed of some real estate agents and mortgage companys is unbelievable.
Glad to say that I was not sub-prime and did not try to live beyond my means. 
My mortgage was paid off in 13 years and 8 months.  Thank God I had a decent job and know how to tighten the proverbial belt.

Calm down boys.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.  Unless we do a rigorous analysis of the raw data, we have to leave the observations and inferences at a high level:

we’re finally starting to see price elasticity ... houses will move if they’re in the buyers’ economic “sweetspot”.

The VAR always puts a positive-for-them spin on any data.  What I’d really like to know is ... how does that $202,322 median price compare with its assessed value?  Maybe the RTD reporters will get off their butts and do some real work and tell us that.

In my community of 1,100 homes, transaction prices of the 81 units sold YTD have averaged 16% below their assessed values.  To me, that’s not a reflection of a decaying market but a broken Assessors Office.  [The full-year 2008 number was -11%.]  And the average price is 9% lower than last year.

Posted by ( MrCobray ) on October 23, 2009 at 2:24 pm

Many will owe more on their house than what it is worth, and in all accounts they will not want to continue with the payments or leave it for the bank to find a new owner at the banks loss.

I feel that we are just starting to see the beginning of this now.

The real estate industry has tried and has been somewhat successful in shifting the blame which was started by agents telling the sellers to ask inflated prices, the appraisers who fell in line to affirm the inflated price, the loan broker who provided the unsuspecting buyer the mortgage. All of these were self serving as they received their cut up front leaving a worthless mortgage that was then shoved off on the big banks and other financial companies hid in with the “packages” that still can’t be deciphered. The ones hurt were the buyers and the banks who ended up with these worthless sub-par mortgages. The buyers were at a disadvantage as they could have got their own appraisal but they would just have been paying another member of the corrupt appraisal industry for an incorrect appraisal. Buyers should have been knowledgeable enough to know when the funny mortgages were offered to them to be wary and suspicious. The buyer should have known how much house they could afford. After all it’s not just the principal and interest it’s the taxes,insurance and upkeep that has to be considered.

So now the needed correction of the market is in progress. We will be much better off once completed.

It’s obvious that you are rooting for people who paid $750,000 for a home to sell it for less than that.

If they paid $750,000 for a house that was actually worth less then they should be stuck with the loss in value.

udontknowjack might want to change their screen name to idontknowjack.  While you may be right it is difficult to say home values are declining because the median sales price has dropped you don’t know anything about what a median is.  All a median price says is that half the homes purchased were valued below 202,322 and have were above that value.  It says nothing about what those actual values were above or below the median.

To really understand what is going on the actual homes in the mix would have to be evaluated.  But I believe it is safe to say home values have declined. As they do more people are deciding either to be a first time buyer or upgrade, mix that with some new distress selling as the next wave of repos come on the market.  You get increased house sales.