The National Association of Realtors’ index of signed purchase agreements
for home resales rose 0.7% for February, having dropped 4.2% in January.
Surprised? I’m not. House prices have leveled off after years of
double-digit growth rates, the cost of borrowing is still within a percentage
point of what was considered downright reasonable a decade ago, and, marvel of
marvels, people keep moving and buying houses. Not as speculation objects, but
to live in. Or as vacation homes. Or has houses their spoiled-rotten kids will
occupy during the college years, converting dollars that would have been spent
on student housing into equity.
One reason is that household net worth -- the difference between total
assets, such as equity, portfolio holdings, and bank accounts, and liabilities,
including mortgages and credit card debt -- totaled $55.6 trillion in the
October-to-December quarter, marking a 2.5% growth rate from the third quarter,
the previous quarterly record high.
For 2006, household net worth rose by 7.4%, after a 7.9% increase registered
in 2005.
Household debt, meanwhile, grew by just 8.6% in 2006, down from an 11.7%
increase in the prior year, with mortgage debt growth slowing to 8.9% growth,
down from 13.8 percent in 2006. Growth in home mortgage debt was the smallest
increase in six years. And if the numbers are any indication, 2007 will mark
another decrease.
How else can you tell that America isn’t quite as poorly off as the
politicians want you to believe? U.S. retail sales gained 4.9% last week from a
year.
According to bearish theory, Americans ought to be drained of spendable cash
because they supposedly cannibalized their home equity to buy jelly beans.
Then, of course, most bears tend to be out of touch with life in general
Build
A Fortune With Foreclosure Short Sales.
Learn A Technique That Only 1% Even Know About And The Other 99% Wish They
Did.
foreclosure
site map
contact us
“There’s so much inventory out there that the buyer can pick and choose,” said Susan Sirles Fidler, a Realtor at Re/Max 10, Oak Lawn. But she cautioned, “The stuff that’s almost free is almost free because it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to put it back together. It’s not buyer beware as much as buyer be smart.”
