January figures on the housing market are in and they don’t look too good. The current market indicators are showing house prices dropping by as much as 26% meaning they have dropped lower than ever. The market conditions on wall street aren’t helping, with roller coaster figures that can;t seem to stabilize. The economy has long been in recession yet the effects are still surprising experts. Home inventories are still over the 9-month overstock, which means it would take 9 months of good sales to fully dispose of them. Nothing seems to be doing good in the real estate business, except the fact people are waiting for their bailout checks to come and help them with their pending foreclosures.
Brokers, agents and everybody in the business is feeling the pinch which they see lasting till the end of this year. The current administration’s $700 billion bailout package has some part of it aimed at the industry (Mae and Mac included) who have lost billions since the market crashed. Whole neighborhoods are being abandoned, even in some of the most developed areas. Fraud is on the rise, online and for real and people desperate for any help are still falling victim. Seems it will take longer for the market to recover, just hope people can hang on and keep their hopes up.