Music Manager Paul Rosenberg Moving On

SELLER: Paul Rosenberg
LOCATION: Beach Street, New York, NY
PRICE: $4,950,000
SIZE: 4,634 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: …a massive 4634 sf triplex with 785 sf of combined outdoor space, currently configured as three bedrooms (two en suite masters), 3.5 baths, plus a home office & dining area.Not only is this an elegant loft home, but a total environment as well which offers a patio with hot tub and outdoor Viking Professional grill with food and beverage center, a Crestron system which has integrated speakers and lighting control throughout every room and patio, home theatre room, glass enclosed wine and cigar bar, game room, and exercise room with sauna…

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Whenever we get a hankering for the hustle and bustle of New York City we poke around the internets to see who might be selling what. Our most recent spin through the always informative StreetEasy turned up a 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom TriBeCa triplex maisonette owned by music manager Paul Rosenberg and currently listed with an asking price of $4,950,000.

While Mister Rosenberg is hardly a household name, his number one client is. In addition to managing angry Academy Award winning white rapper Eminem, Mister Rosenberg has also had his voice sampled on most (if not all) of Mister Eminem’s albums and together the pair founded Shady Records, a label that also signed D12 (whoever that is) and the mega-rich money machine that is 50 Cent. Mister Rosenberg also manages The Knux and Three 6 Mafia (who won an academy award for their song It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp from the film Hustle and Flow) as well as co-manages the newly reformed pop-punk band Blink 182.

Property records and previous reports reveal that Mister Rosenberg scooped up the 4,634 square foot Beach Street maisonette, carved out of a former warehouse known as the Fischer Mills building, in August of 2002 for around $2,700,000. For all the non-New York puppies who don’t know because they probably don’t exist in places like Peoria, a maisonette is a multi-story house-like apartment, usually on the ground floor of a larger building, that possesses its own entrance from the outside. Maisonettes provide the privacy of a private home, but still have access to the amenities and security measures offered by the building.

According to listing information, the maisonette’s main floor, includes 14-16 foot ceilings, lots of exposed brick and the original, rough-hewn wood beams and column supports which are classic (if cliché) TriBeCa loft conversion aesthetic features. The living room measures nearly 600 square feet and includes loads of built in storage cabinets, a wet bar and an small section of thick glass flooring that looks down into and provides much needed light for what listing information calls a “wine and cigar bar” on the lower floor.

Also on the main level is a stone floored kitchen with maple cabinetry, black counter tops that appear to be stone rather than granite and a large work island with a quartet of bar stools similar to those that can be found in about a thousand cheap Chinese food restaurants below 23rd Street. The adjacent dining room has a soaring 16 foot ceiling, a set of French doors that open to a balcony overlooking the apartment’s private patio below, and an entire wall covered in varying shades of green color-blocks that we’d bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly are leather panels affixed to the wall. Rather unfortunately, a powder pooper for guests opens directly into the dining room, which for obvious reasons is not optimal but could easily be relocated to a slightly better location on an adjacent wall.

One of the maisonette’s two master bedrooms completes the middle level and features two sets of French doors opening to the aforementioned balcony, a couple of not particularly commodious closets and a bathroom with a radiant heated stone floor. Hovering above the living space is a small loft office space and a second master bedroom with more generously sized closets than the master on the main floor and a large bathroom also, we presume, fitted with radiant heated floors, a feature Your Mama’s tootsies can not get enough of.

The lowest level of the triplex is where it becomes obvious that a man lives here. In addition to guest bedroom with direct access to the private patio, there is a home gym set-up with a dry sauna large enough to accommodate a few friends, a windowless recreation room with a round, poker game friendly table and chairs, an arcade game or two, a glassed enclosed wine and cigar bar and a media room with stone walls, caramel leather cover recliner like chairs.

A small and enviable private garden includes a built in grill area and a hot tub which sounds like a good idea except we’re more than a little concerned about all the windows that might look down into the patio which would make skinny dipping and hooking up with a hottie a bit more of a exhibitionist’s fantasy that Your Mama would feel comfortable.

According to listing information, Mister Rosenberg first put his three floor bachelor pad on the market in November of 2008 with an asking price of $5,450,000 and recently hacked five hundred grand off the price, a not so unusual maneuver in a somewhat stagnant Manhattan real estate market. None the less, Your Mama’s bejeweled abacus shows that even if Mister Rosenberg has to slice and dice the asking price even further, he could still easily pocket a million or more smackers on a sale which is, of course, nothing to sneeze at.

May 16th Conference Call and Webinar with Mike Morgan

I apologize to everyone expecting me to be posting more on this blog. I have been under the weather for the past couple of weeks, and now my Mom is in the hospital.

BUT . . .

Just in case I don’t get to post, I am holding an open conference call and webinar on May 16th. If you have questions about what is going on in and where we are going, please join us. I will be discussing the following:

1 - The Next Leg of the Housing Crisis . . . A Tsunami of Foreclosures

2 - Chrysler, General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Honda . . . Fiat too.

3 - Commercial Real Estate Collapse

4 - Pensions . . . and why you can’t depend on them.

5 - Municipal Bankruptcies

6 - Depression Level Unemployment

7 - How To Invest in Gold

8 - Stocks to Beat the Dow Jones

9 - Call in the Bottom in Housing

10 - Does Goldman Sachs and Wall Street Run the Government

11 - And I will take questions for as long as you can ask them. These conference calls generally last 4-6 hours, so you’re definitely going to get your money’s worth . . . and this one’s FREE.

Register in advance for dial in and access codes - Click Here

May 16th at 9:00PM Eastern . . . and if you can’t make it, you can listen to the entire call on a replay link. Just register for the call, and you will receive the replay link the following day.

Mid-Cycle Meltdown!: Jobless Claims April 30 2009

Today, the Department of Labor released their latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted "initial" unemployment claims declined 14,000 to 631,000 from last week's revised 645,000 claims while "continued" claims jumped 133,000 resulting in an "insured" unemployment rate of 4.7%.

It's important to note that the two most significant periods for job cuts on a non-seasonally adjusted basis is January 15 and July 15 so as July and clearer visibility on H2 quickly approaches it will be interesting to see how initial jobless claims fares.

Also, the continuing claims series is presenting the clearest picture of what is likely to be one of the most problematic aspects of this period of economic crisis namely how to make an immense and growing number of highly specialized (college educated) service/professional service workers productive again.

It's obvious now that we have reached the first real test of our majority services-based economy.

Unlike the "tech-wreck" of 2000-2002, our current downturn is very broad, leaving no sector and virtually no corner of the country untouched.

With millions of college educated workers now on the market incomes will clearly suffer but moreover, it will be soon all too clear that our prior bubble economy significantly overproduced service workers (particularly professional service workers) for which current employment opportunities will be scant resulting in continued and fundamental vicious-cycle effects.

The following chart shows the recent trend in initial non-seasonally adjusted initial jobless claims with the year-over-year percent change acting as a rough equivalent of a seasonally adjustment.

Historically, unemployment claims both "initial" and "continued" (ongoing claims) are a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate and inevitably the overall state of the economy.

I have added a chart to the lineup which shows "population adjusted" continued claims (ratio of unemployment claims to the non-institutional population) and the unemployment rate since 1967.

Adjusting for the general increase in population tames the continued claims spike down a bit but as you can see, the pattern is still indicating that recession has arrived.

The following chart (click for larger version) shows "initial" and "continued" claims, averaged monthly, overlaid with U.S. recessions since 1967 and from 2000.

NOTE: The charts below plot a "monthly" average NOT a 4 week moving average so the latest monthly results should be considered preliminary until the complete monthly results are settled by the fourth week of each following month.

As you can see, acceleration to claims generally precedes recessions.

Also, acceleration and deceleration of unemployment claims has generally preceded comparable movements to the unemployment rate by 3 – 8 months (click for larger version).

In the above charts you can see, especially for the last three post-recession periods, that there has generally been a steep decline in unemployment claims and the unemployment rate followed by a "flattening" period of employment and subsequently followed by even further declines to unemployment as growth accelerated.

This flattening period demarks the "mid-cycle slowdown" where for various reasons growth has generally slowed but then resumed with even stronger growth.

Until late 2007, one could make the case (as Fed chief Ben Bernanke surly did) that we were again experiencing simply a mid-cycle slowdown but now those hopes are long gone.

Adding a little more data shows that in the early 2000s we experienced a period of economic growth unlike the past several post-recession periods.

Look at the following chart (click for larger version) showing "initial" and "continued" unemployment claims, the ratio of non-farm payrolls to non-institutional population and single family building permits since 1967.

The most notable feature of the post-"dot com" recession era that is, unlike other recent post-recession eras, job growth has been very weak, not succeeding to reach trend growth as had minimally accomplished in the past.

Another feature is that housing was apparently buffeted by the response to the last recession, preventing it from fully correcting thus postponing the full and far more severe downturn to today.

It is now completely clear that the potential "mid-cycle" slowdown that appeared to be shaping up in late 2007, had been traded for a less severe downturn in the aftermath of the "dot-com" recession, and now has we have fully entered, instead, a mid-cycle meltdown.

The Big Digs of Deion Sanders

SELLER: Deion and Pilar Sanders
LOCATION: N. Preston Road, Prosper, TX
PRICE: $21,000,000
SIZE: 29,122 square feet, 10 bedrooms, 9 full and 4 half bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: The ultimate party and family ranch. 2 story entry, sunken living, banquet dining, your own Dave and Busters, indoor basketball court and bowling alley, indoor and outdoor pools, movie theatre, billiard room, hall of fame gallery, football field, 12 acre lake, tennis court, guest house, 10 car garage, furniture negotiable, approx. living area 29,112 sq. ft. and 38,831 gross sq. ft. footage in main home.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the Texas Twostepper we’ve learned that notorious egomaniac, publicity hound, sports commentator, reality television star (Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love), and retired professional athlete Deion Sanders and his wifey Pilar have listed their farm/estate in Prosper, TX with an asking price of $21,000,000.

Not being familiar with much in the way of the manly sports, Your Mama had to take to the internets to figure out who this Deion Sanders person is. Our brief research showed that not only did the man play professional baseball he also played professional football for the Atlanta Falcons, the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys who in 1995 paid the well-built corner back $35,000,000 for a seven year contract that included a staggering $12,999,000 signing bonus. He later, according to the interweb, played with the pigskin for the Washington Redskins and finally the Baltimore Ravens before hanging up his cleats. Football players wear cleats, right?

Deion and Pilar’s property sits 10 or 20 long miles north of the Dallas metro-plex on more than 100 acres of flat lands in picayune Prosper, TX. Now children, we don’t know eh-nee-thing about real estate in North Texas, but we have a hard time imagining there are many moguls or oil tycoons looking to drop twenty some million clams on a house in teeny-tiny and not particularly prosperous Prosper, TX where we can assure you there isn’t much in the way of businesses that cater to Maybach owners and Gucci lovers.

Listing information shows Mister Sanders’ sprawling mega-mansion of indeterminate and indiscriminate architectural style measures a titanic 29,122 square feet of glossy marble floors, soaring ceilings, colossal crystal chandeliers and some of the most disturbing drapery Your Mama has seen in a very long time. The house is so humongous that the able bodied Mister Sanders often gets around on one of those Rascal scooters that are more commonly used by the old, the infirm, the physically decrepit and apparently, the lazy.

According to listing information, the multi-winged monster mansion contains 10 bedrooms including a first floor master bedroom suite with a sitting room that spins like a damn turn table, a large, round and orgy friendly bed, more smoked glass and black lacquer than we recommend be in one place at one time, a two story walk-in closet, kitchen, a behemoth bathroom with a garden tub (whatever that is) and a private 2-car attached garage separate from the 10 or 12 other garage spaces that house Mister Sanders extensive collection of tricked out whips located at the opposite end of the house.

Listing information also shows there are 9 full and 4 half bathrooms which our bejeweled abacus shows adds up to an unlucky thirteen terlits. Our tyrannical and seriously superstitious house gurl Svetlana would demand that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter either add or remove a bathroom before she’d even step across the threshold because she refuses to enter a house with 13 of anything.

There are, according to one listing we located, multiple staircases, an elevator, 5 fireplaces, 3 dining areas and 7 living areas including a marble floored, hotel lobby sized living room featuring funeral home style curtains. The vast and seriously dated kitchen complex includes maple cabinets, marble floors, stainless steel appliances and black counter tops and accents. Other rooms include a family room with 10 tee-vees and 2 security monitors, a library, a solarium, a home gym, office, billiard room, a barber shop and something called a “Hall of Fame Gallery.” There are probably about a dozen other rooms for various uses we can not even fathom and there is a detached guest house in the back for all those who think 10 bedrooms in the mega-sized main house is not enough space when it comes to shacking up the in-laws.

Outdoor and recreational facilities include a multi-level movie theater, an indoor swimming pool and spa with some of the ass ugliest swagged drapery we have ever had the displeasure of witnessing with our own eyes, a two-lane bowling alley, an indoor basketball court, two adjacent outdoor swimming pools including a lagoon style number with a concrete island in the middle, a party sized outdoor spa, a 12-acre lake stocked with fish, equestrian facilities, pasture lands…breathe, breathe, breathe…a sport court, children’s playground, sunken trampoline, batting cage, a full sized damn football field (with goal posts), a lighted tennis court and a gargantuan game room modeled after a Dave & Busters which, much to Your Mama’s horror, is some sort of restaurant, arcade, sports bar and gambling parlor franchise.

We can’t imagine why Mister and Missus Sanders, who have three young children together and two more teenagers from Mister Sanders’ previous marriage, would want to up and sell this self-contained estate that while depressing to Your Mama’s delicate decorative sensibilities is surely a resort-like wonderland for pre-teens, toddlers and adult men who do not want to grow up.

For a more in depth peep at Deion’s digs check this out but Your Mama recommends y’all get yerself a nerve pill and pour some booze down yer gullet first.

First Time Buyers Increasingly On The Hunt

What's become apparent, especially now, but over the last year is that first-time homebuyers continue to play a bigger role in the Portland real estate market. In fact, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) recently stated that first-timers increased their national share from 36% in 2006 to 41% in 2008.

Until present homeowners can consistently sell their homes to become "move-up" buyers, this trend will probably remain. This is also reinforced by a major incentive: the new $8000 tax credit offered in the stimulus package for first-time homebuyers if they buy a home by December 2009.

This is link explaining the $8000 first time homebuyer tax credit.

And here is a news report featuring first time homebuyers in Florida, their motivations, and their challenges.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

After being out of work for almost 5 months, a couple weeks ago, I was able to get a job on a 4 month contract. I’ve another company that is interested in me for a full time position as well, but that is taking a bit longer to play out. As you might imagine, when I was not working, expenses had to be cut back and plans put off until later. I was living the classic case of “deferred maintenance” that many real estate investors know about from looking for properties to purchase form owners in similar situations - if it is still working, don’t put any money into it.

So once I got a job, I went on a buying spree - both my car and my wife’s car needed new tires, routine maintenance and other repairs to the tune of about $1,000 each, our dishwasher and oven got repaired, and some other general stuff was done. I was just thinking I was about caught up when… my computer died. Even worse, it died right after I bought something to fix a different problem it had.

Saturday night, I noticed my computer’s event log was showing lots of disk drive-related errors. I knew the drive was going to fail soon, so on Sunday, I went out a bought a new drive. When I got home, I put the drive aside and planned to install it that evening. Two hours later, I went to check my email and the machine locked up hard. I cycled power and, in the middle of booting, everything went dead - the screen went black, the drives stopped spinning, and the only light on the machine was a blinking orange LED in the power button. It would not turn on again. After much investigation, I noticed a couple of blown capacitors on the motherboard. Crap. Dead motherboard. Well, at least I hadn’t spent any time replacing the hard drive yet.

Thankfully, I have some income coming in now to pay for a new computer, in addition to the other repairs I had to pay for. And, even more thankfully, I had made a full backup of my computer about 10 hours before it failed.

Anyway, so after being unemployed for months, I was just starting to get back into the swing of things and was thinking about putting together another blog post, and now this happens. It’ll be about 1-2 weeks before the new computer arrives.

One the positive side, I received another payment from one of the four flipping LLCs in California. I also received a quarterly payment from the Houston apartment investment, which, as I mentioned last month, should be increasing in the future. The same day I received those checks, I also received my huge federal income tax refund. Unfortunately, it was so huge because I had a huge loss on the sale of Rental #1. Well, the tax refund gave me back about one-third of my loss and, really, it came at an opportune time. I would like to post updated ROI numbers for these investments, but, unfortunately, all the data was on my computer.

Anthony Clark Is Flipping Out Again

SELLER: Anthony Clark
LOCATION: Senalda Road, Los Angeles CA
PRICE: $1,995,000
SIZE: 2,574 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Extraordinary brand nu 2009 remodel never been lived in. 2 years in the making! The finest materials & design. Amazing residence w/ serene Costa Rica style cnyn vus. Magnif Douglas Fir hi pitch beam ceilings. Beaut ironwood, teakwood, oak, slate, & basalt accents thru-out. Dramatic black bamboo flrs. Sub-zero kitchen. Fleetwood doors. Hansgrohe fixtures. Master suite has incredible entertaining terrace & all glass window bath w/ grand steam shower. 3rd bedroom has sep entrance.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Back in early January Your Mama discussed a couple of California cribs being flipped by actor/comedian Anthony Clark who the children may remember from his six year spin as an excessively uptight film executive on the now canceled sit-com Yes, Dear.

We first discussed Mister Clark’s Robert Byrd designed digs at the tippy-top of Outpost Drive in Los Angeles which listing information shows is still available with an asking price of $2,395,000 (reduced from $2,795,000). Mister Clark, according to listing information, would also be willing to lease the house at $7,800 per month under just about any circumstances…short term, long term, furnished or unfurnished.

The very next day we shooshed on down to lovely (if way too boho-luxe for our taste anymore) Laguna Beach where Mister Clark is selling a comely contemporary house on Coast View Drive. Listing information reveals the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom dwelling was first listed nearly a year ago with an asking price of $3,289,000, a figure that has been hugely hacked to $2,495,000 and which records show is just $295,000 more than he paid for the place in April of 2004.

Recently Mister Clark flipped a third property in the celebrity packed Outpost Estates area of Los Angeles onto the market. Located on Senalda Drive and just a few doors down from Scarlett Johansson’s never lived in mansion on the same street, the property is currently priced at $1,995,000 after recently receiving a substantial $200,000 price chop from its original listing price of $2,195,000.

A peep into the property records reveals that Mister Clark, one of the few out homosexual actors in Hollywood, picked up the property in June of 2007 for $1,200,000. Mister Clark spent the next couple of years fixing up the fixer upper (and it was truly a fixer children because we’ve seen the photos).

Listing information shows the hillside house measures 2,574 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, a bed to bath ratio the Dr. Cooter swoons over, but one our harsh tongued house gurl Svetlana does not feel the same way about for obvious reasons.

As do many houses in the hills above Hollywood, the front facade is set back only a few feet from the road behind a stacked stone pony wall and has been clad in lovely horizontal strips of multi-toned woods that may or may not be ironwood and/or teak. Now listen here children, Your Mama does not want to hear from all you whiners who want to prattle on about how terrible it is that this house sits close the road. For your information, there are probably about 19 cars that drive by here everyday and whether any of you rural queens or space hogs like it or not, geography often dictates that houses in the hills hug the streets on which they sit.

Anyhoo, the organic modern vibe continues on the interiors where the floors are either feel good on your feet slate or durable and environmentally friendly black bamboo. The open plan living/dining and kitchen areas share a high peaked wood ceiling and floor to ceiling windows that open to a series of not quite big enough to bbq balconies.

The horizontal motif returns in the kitchen which is wrapped in strips oak and teak (and perhaps iron wood). A complete suite of high grade stainless steel appliances have been slipped into custom oak cabinets topped with basalt counter tops. We are particularly fond of the nearly 900 pound, 2-door and 4-drawer Sub-Zero refrigerator/freeze that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of fourteen thousand dollars.

The master bedroom, located on the lower level, continues with the organic shit and features a stacked stone wall, more of that beauteous black bamboo flooring and gigantic bathroom with double sinks, a party sized steam shower and a soaking tub that sits in front of a wall of windows that slide open so that the soft scents of pine and scrub can waft in while sitting in a pool of dirty water.

Due to it’s hillside perch, there really isn’t much of a yard for kiddies or our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly , but a large covered terrace has been fashioned out of what was once just the spider filled underneath part of the house. Easy maintenance Mother-in-law’s tongue plants have been planted up against the house in a planting bed filled with some of those zen-ish grey stones and little green poofy plants. Although we think those paltry pillows and that little wicker table thing-a-majig are simply unacceptable as patio furniture (what grown person who doesn’t contort their body with that yoga shit can get up and down off the floor like that?) we can imagine that with the proper outdoor furniture set-up, this under the house terrace would be a nice place to sip gin and tonics while reading the latest gossip glossies and watching the sun go down through the “Costa Rica like” trees that dot the slope below the house and obscure what might actually be a spectacular view if they weren’t there. A less environmentally inclined person will figure out a way to send those trees to the wood chipper, but clearly Mister Clark is a tree lover.

It’s unclear to Your Mama which of Mister Clark’s three houses he inhabits (or if he lives in yet another property) but we presume he’ll simply move to one or another when one of his three properties finally sells to someone appreciative of this renovation style. Your Mama hopes Mister Clark sells something soon–or gets a damn acting job–because just thinking about his crushing monthly carrying costs makes Your Mama shudder.

Vacant Homes More Common In Portland

The U.S. Census Bureau reported this week that there was a record 19 million homes unoccupied in the first quarter. This brought to mind all the vacant houses I see when I'm showing homes. There are a lot. More than last year.

By my calculations, 47% of all the homes for sale in Portland metro are vacant. Admittedly, this isn't the most detailed of studies, but a scan of all the properties currently listed as active or bumpable in the RMLS. When I researched this data about a year ago, 39% of these properties were vacant. That's a significant increase.

Here is the percentage of homes that are vacant currently in 2009 vs. 2008. Every area has a higher percentage this year than last:

2009 Rate vs. 2008 Rate = Area

56 vs. 47 = North Portland
52 vs. 42 = Northeast Portland
50 vs. 43 = Southeast Portland
44 vs. 35 = Gresham, Troutdale
41 vs. 37 = Milwaukie, Clackamas, Happy Valley
36 vs. 32 = Oregon City, Canby
40 vs. 33 = Lake Oswego, West Linn
52 vs. 40 = SW Portland
50 vs. 41 = NW Washington County
48 vs. 41 = Beaverton, Aloha
43 vs. 38 = Tigard, Tualatin, Sherwood, Wilsonville
47 vs. 36 = Hillsboro, Forest Grove

Question of The Day - Down and Out in Omaha?

Everyone investor wants to be like Buffett but even Buffett isn't Buffett anymore…

What's with all his wacky derivatives trading?

You go off buying BRK.A or BRK.B shares with the assumption that Buffet makes sensible long term investments and now you come to find he's been making oddball bets like a drunkard at OTB… What deception!

Shouldn't Berkshire investors be looking for a bailout?

Home Prices Down, But U.S. Decline Slows

Portland and national home prices remain down, but the national pace of decline has slowed down. This is according to this morning's Case-Shiller report.

Portland home prices are down 14.4% for the period spanning February 2008 to February 2009. The previous report showed Portland home prices down 14 percent. Meanwhile, U.S. home prices are down 18.6 percent during this time period, a slight improvement from the previous record setting decline of 19 percent.

Here are the average price declines listed from best to worst:

Rate = City

-4.5% = Dallas
-5.7% = Denver
-7.2% = Boston
-8.5% = Cleveland
-9.4% = Charlotte
-10.2% = New York
-14.4% = Portland
-15.3% = Atlanta
-15.4% = Seattle
-17.6% = Chicago
-19.2% = Washington, D.C.
-20.3% = Minneapolis
-22.9% = San Diego
-23.0% = Tampa
-23.6% = Detroit
-24.1% = Los Angeles
-29.5% = Miami
-31.0% = San Francisco
-31.7% = Las Vegas
-35.2% = Phoenix

Crashachusetts Existing Home Sales and Prices: March 2009

Today, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors (MAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for March showing that single family home sales declined 4.7% on a year-over-year basis while condo sales dropped 19.8% over the same period firmly indicating that the Massachusetts residential real estate market is continuing to erode.

Further, the single family median home value declined a whopping 19.0% on a year-over-year basis to $255,000 while condo median prices dropped 14.9% to $224,500.

Clearly, the impact of the recent stock market crash (that keeps on crashing) and ongoing economic crisis is bearing down on both consumer sentiment and, more fundamentally, credit availability resulting in a significant pullback in spending on homes and other costly purchases.

It's perfectly clear now that home sellers that choose to wait out the "down market" did so in vain as the 2008 selling season marked likely the last opportunity to sell any residential property at anywhere near the prices set in the peak boom years.

With confidence depressed and eroding and sale volumes this low, Boston area home prices have nowhere left to go but down.

Of course, the Massachusetts Association of Realtor president Gary Rogers continues his more hopeful tone while embracing government handouts for his industry:

"With the drop in prices, conditions still favor the buyer, especially the first-time homebuyer, and we do expect they will continue to respond well to the first-time homebuyer tax credit that was signed into law by President Obama in February."

It's important to keep the following points in mind when considering the impact of the housing tax credit legislation:

• The credit is for "first time" home buyers only… if you have had ownership interest in any home (including condos) anytime in the last three years you are NOT eligible.
• The credit has income restrictions of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for married couples filing jointly.
• The credit can only be used for principle residence.
• The credit cannot be applied to the downpayment.

So this is really a very limited program and will very likely NOT result in any noticeable increase in demand in our area.

As in months past, be on the lookout for the inflation adjusted charts produced by BostonBubble.com for an even more accurate “real” view of the current home price movement.

Today's Key Statistics:

Single Family results compared to March 2008

• Sales: declined 4.7%
• Median Selling Price: declined 19%
• Inventory: declined 19%
• Current Months Supply: 12.0
• Current Days on Market: 156

Condo results compared to March 2008

• Sales: declined 19.8%
• Median Selling Price: declined 14.9%
• Inventory: declined 26%
• Current Months supply: 13.3
• Current Days on Market: 158