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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (30151)	4/26/2005 4:01:59 PM
From: Tradelite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

re: your question about condos being "lumped in" with new home sales. I don't believe condos are included in the sales figures. I brought this issue up a while back on this thread, because condo sales are such a big deal in major cities, yet apparently don't show up in the monthly new home sales figures. The Census Bureau defines new home sales as sales involving one-family single houses. I can understand why the bureau wouldn't be reporting individual condo unit sales, because it says its new home sales figures are derived from building permits. A construction permit for an entire condo building includes many individual units and reflects many individual home buyers who apparently aren't being counted. If you visit the census.gov website and click on the link to the new home sales release, you can see detailed info about the data, the methodology, and lots of tables about housing activity by region, by sales price, etc.

To: mishedlo who wrote (30151)	4/26/2005 4:11:40 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

When looking at "Existing Home Sales" keep in mind that the way this data is reported was recently changed by David Lereah, Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors. Previously, the NAR reported three categories of Existing Sales: Single Family; Condo; and Co-op. Effective April 1, 2005 these sales were consolidated into one single Existing Home Sales and the historical data has also been changed. Last month we heard about the change in "Existing (single-family) Home Sales" and this month we are hearing about the change in "Existing (single-family, condo, co-op) Home Sales". This is important. As you reach the end of a real estate bubble, "Existing Single Family Home" sales decline as few buyers can afford to buy, while the speculative activity moves to "Existing Condo/Co-op Home" sales which increase all the faster. If BMW previously sold 5 million luxury cars and now sold 5.5 million Mini-Coopers but no luxury cars - how well are they doing really? We need to look at total dollar sales - something which is not reported for "home" sales. .