US new home sales surge in March (suicide watch initiated at Reuters)

Reuters ^ | 04-25-03

[warchild9]

This trend will reverse when the inevitable rise in interest rates begins.

[GOPJ]

Love it:

"US new home sales surge in March (suicide watch initiated at Reuters)"

[hripka]

Long-term, above-average returns will return to trend.

Same goes for below-average returns.

[Grampa Dave]

Yep, the suicide watch is set. We must watch out for all members of the left wing mediots who are praying for economic disaster in America. Just like they prayed for hundreds of thousands of American Body bags returning from Iraq.

Include the 3rd party gold bugs who pray each day for a crash in our markets.

Include the mentally ill, who claim to be conservative but want America to fail under President Bush.

[Grampa Dave]

You would be great writing the gloom and doom stories based on wet dreams instead of reality. I could help with a few headlines.

[Grampa Dave]

We have younger relatives living in eastern Contra Costa county in N. California.

Ten homes have gone up for resale in their area in the first two weeks of April, as people are upgrading to bigger and more expensive homes.

All ten home sold in less than a week. Several have several stand by offers. Most people in less than 3 years have made $70 to 100,000 on their investments. They are trading up to larger and more expensive homes.

The new developments in this area are selling out in weeks after being opened.

Of course all of these people selling their home will be homeless for a day or so as they sadly put their furniture on the trucks to move to a newer and more expensive home.

[Grampa Dave]

Established homes in the N. California Wine country are selling very fast.

Homes in the price ranges of $900,000 to 1.5 Million in March and April if they are in good shape are selling in 4 to 6 weeks with backup buyers.

A friend who is a recent widow, put her home up for sale for $965,000 sold her home with two back up offers when her agent held an open house for the real estate people.

One of the agents invited a contractor who specializes in remodeling the upper range houses before the new buyers move in. He bought the home and two other realtors at the open house made backup offers. He is now in the process of a $150,000 upgrade/refurbing of the house. He will live in it a couple of years and sell it at a big profit. He has done this several times the past two decades.

[Tauzero]

Meanwhile, existing home sales plunged in March.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

Yes, according to Merriam-Webster you are correct in your definition of "average."

Main Entry: ¹av·er·age
Pronunciation: 'a-v(&-)rij
Function: noun
Etymology: from earlier average proportionally distributed charge for damage at sea, modification of Middle French avarie damage to ship or cargo, from Old Italian avaria, from Arabic 'awArIyah damaged merchandise
Date: 1732
1 a : a single value (as a mean, mode, or median) that summarizes or represents the general significance of a set of unequal values b : MEAN 1b
2 a : an estimation of or approximation to an arithmetic mean b : a level (as of intelligence) typical of a group, class, or series <above the average>
3 : a ratio expressing the average performance especially of an athletic team or an athlete computed according to the number of opportunities for successful performance
- on average or on the average : taking the typical example of the group under consideration <prices have increased on average by five percent>
synonyms AVERAGE, MEAN, MEDIAN, NORM mean something that represents a middle point. AVERAGE is exactly or approximately the quotient obtained by dividing the sum total of a set of figures by the number of figures <scored an average of 85 on tests>. MEAN may be the simple average or it may represent value midway between two extremes <a high of 70° and a low of 50° give a mean of 60°>. MEDIAN applies to the value that represents the point at which there are as many instances above as there are below <average of a group of persons earning 3, 4, 5, 8, and 10 dollars a day is 6 dollars, whereas the median is 5 dollars>. NORM means the computed or estimated average of performance of a significantly large group, class, or grade <scores about the norm for 5th grade arithmetic>.

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

Isn't that what everyone thought about the stock-market a few years back?No, it's not.

Look at the majority of the people who are wealthy in this country and it's through real estate. Even dirt poor farmers are often times wealthy becasue of the worth of their land. Wealth and high income being two entirely different things, of course.

Banks won't happily let you leverage your stock market investments. They won't give you 90% of your investment while letting you put in only 10% (unles you guarentee their 90% with something real). They will gladly take 90%, or more, of the risk of real estate investments, letting you keep the profits on 100% of the value even though you only own 10% of it (if that's what you put down).

[69ConvertibleFirebird]

This trend will reverse when the inevitable rise in interest rates begins.

They'll tear the houses down and start making trees out of them?

(Yes, of course things go in cycles. We've been in a real estate boom for about 3 years now. Funny how it conter balances the stock market)

[warchild9]

We're seeing the trend reverse here in Central NC. Too many people have lost their jobs, and now houses which went for $200,000 are lingering on the market at $175,000 or so. My neighborhood is still selling hot, but I worry. And an agent friend of mine says the commercial market is moribund.

[freeper12]

>>Long-term, above-average returns will return to trend.

EXACTLY...and since prices have been rising at way above average, they will at some point need to drastically underperform in order to trend towards the historical norm.

Everytime, without exception, the great masses of people believe they have found they next easiest way to get rich easy and they jump on the bandwagon...you know the party is just about over...

[freeper12]

>>Look at the majority of the people who are wealthy in this country and it's through real estate.

I don't know for a fact if that is true or not, but I'll concede your point...an awful lot of people got rich in real estate in the past...but, just because a majority of rich people got rich in real-estate, doesn't mean that a majority of all people can get rich in real estate...and that is what is supposedly going on here...

An awful lot of people got rich in the stock market too, up until the point where the majority of all people came to beleive they too could get rich in the stock market...I don't care what market you are talking about, wether it be gold, stocks, bonds or real-estate etc...when the masses of people discover it, and in mass decides its the way to get rich...the masses are usually wrong.