New home sales are on the rise!

The following is a headline report from Yahoo financial. It seems that new homes have finally reached a bottom. With the combination of prices at all time lows and rising, along with historically low interest rates, it seems that now is the smartest time to buy. Most likely, however, new home sales and prices will continue to bounce along their bottoms for the next few months, but based on this new data, it seems that real estate is not going down any futher!

US new home sales showed a modest 2.7 percent rebound in September, helped by falling prices, government data showed Monday. Sales of new one-family houses rose to an annualized pace of 464,000, above market expectations of 458,000. Despite the monthly gain, new home sales were still down 33.1 percent from a year ago, reflecting the unprecedented meltdown in the US property market after a years-long boom. The median sales price of new houses was 218,400 dollars, compared to 221,900 a month earlier. The inventory of unsold homes fell slightly to 394,000, a supply of 10.4 months at the current sales rate. Because the meltdown in housing has mushroomed into a wide financial crisis, Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors said the report was positive news. "Despite the fact that builders are moving very few new homes, the slight rise in sales holds out hope that the bottom has been reached," Naroff said. "Eventually, financial institutions will decide that it makes sense to make loans again. Once mortgage money becomes more available and with home prices reasonable, I wouldn't be surprised to see a solid rebound in housing demand." Economist Patrick Newport at IHS Global Insight said the drop in inventories was a "positive detail" in the report, but that the data probably only partly reflected the financial market turmoil since mid-September. "Going forward, sales will continue to drop because of falling house prices for existing homes, tighter credit, and a deteriorating economy," Newport said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081027/ts_alt_afp/useconomypropertysales_081027174852