Home Sales Down, Big Time in November

Boy, it seems like every month you hear something different about home sales. You have to wonder how true some of the information is since you read differing accounts on different news outlets, but this one seems to be pretty consistent everywhere I have looked to cross reference it. I’m interested in what home sales are doing just because we recently started the refinance process for our home, which I’ve detailed in several stories to you, mostly about how annoying it has been, and because our home appraised for a lot less than we thought it would, which was only the first wrench that was thrown into our refinance bid.

I wanted to know when the homes sales were truly going to post better numbers for significant portion of time, none of this, one week they’re up, one they’re down, or one month they’re up the next they’re down. After all, we need to see that they’re up for several months or even years before we can gauge how the housing market is truly faring.

That’s just my opinion though. Take for instance the fact that home sales supposedly plummeted in November. The reason is probably that the massive tax credit that was appealing to so many was winding down. A lot of people were only buying because of this crazy tax credit incentive, and now that is gone, are people still going to want to buy homes as readily? Also, you have to consider whether these one offs are truly any sort of sign that the economy is improving or if they are just that, one offs.

Actually, the tax credit was extended after it was considered to be done away with by end of November, and people discovered they now had lots more time to shop around, which probably wasn’t the best incentive to take advantage of the great tax credit quickly, so economists think that is why they dipped almost 12% in november. It may have had to do with the coming holidays too, no one likes to move around the holidays.

I wouldn’t put too much into what this means though, it’s typical for home sales to dry up around this time, and this is just speculation that it means the recovery is not going to happen any time soon.