"The bear market continues; home prices are back to their March, 2004 levels," David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's, said in a statement.Okay, now as anyone can remember who was in the market in 2004 as a seller: those were not hard times in Houston.
So while other economic metrics mentioned in the article are at multi-decade lows, home prices in Houston remained relatively stable in comparison, down year-over-year in November by about 7%, but that's on much much lighter activity overall. Basically, sellers are afraid to sell, and buyers are afraid to buy, and so we mustn't be too serious about the price figures, which only reflect a small set of data due to the overall inactivity in the Houston market. (Note an important corollary: many would-be area sellers are also would-be area buyers. They are coupled, and so are the market effects.)
In other news, while the article says that a turnaround in housing is required for an overall economic turnaround (true enough), it also reports an important jobs figure:
Chief among consumers' woes has been spiraling job losses in recent months.As we've discussed on this site again and again, the real indicator of an economic turnaround will be a stabilization of job losses. Without jobs, the economy can go nowhere for 99% of Americans. If you want a good housing market, you must have a good jobs market.
U.S. employers axed 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November alone, the most in 34 years, according to Labor Department data released earlier this month.
The Conference Board data reflected this, with its "jobs hard to get" index rising to 42.0 in December -- the highest since December 1992. That was up from 37.1 in November.
Repeat ad nauseum.
