U.S. July Home Prices Dropped 3.3% as Foreclosed Properties Flooded Market

[marmar]

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. home prices dropped 3.3 percent in July from a year earlier, the eighth consecutive decline, as foreclosed properties flooded the market.

Prices fell 0.5 percent from June, the Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington said in a report today. Economists had projected a 0.2 percent decline from the previous month, based on the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

Foreclosures are boosting the supply of available properties and reducing prices, even as mortgage rates tumble to record lows. The time it would take to clear the market of homes for sale was 12.5 months in July, the highest in more than a decade of data, according to the National Association of Realtors. Banks seized a record 95,364 properties from delinquent borrowers in August, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based seller of housing data.

“We have a lot of homes for sale, and a lot of them are distressed properties,” said Thomas Lawler, founder and president of Lawler Housing and Economic Consulting in Leesburg, Virginia. “That is putting downward pressure on home prices.”

Sales of existing homes in July plunged 27 percent to a 3.83 million annual pace, the lowest level on record, NAR said Aug. 24. July sales of new homes dropped to an annual pace of 276,000, the fewest since data began in 1963, the Commerce Department reported Aug. 25. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqEbsj68x7P4&pos=1

[joeybee12]

1. That's what's weird about the jump in new home starts released the other day...

WHY? Why are new homes being built when there's still such a vast number of homes still in unsold inventory?

[marmar]

2. As they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again.....

...... and expecting a different result.

[joeybee12]

3. Capitalism is therefore insane...

no argument from me...although I might tweek that and say unregulated capitalism is insane.