Thursday, August 14, 2008

NAR: Sacramento Tops For Price Declines (Again)

Bloomberg reports on the latest numbers from the National Association of Realtors (NAR):

The biggest [second quarter] declines reported by the Realtors today were in Sacramento, the capital of California, with a 36 percent drop, followed by the metropolitan area around Cape Coral and Ft. Myers, Florida, down 33 percent.
The more things change, the more they stay the same (at least at the NAR). The Mess That Greenspan Made takes the NAR to task for its latest propaganda public relations campaign. "It's a great ideal time to buy!"

From Home Front:
It's kind of uncanny how much it [commercial real estate] resembles the path taken by the residential sector. Unbridled faith in the future led to an excess of investment capital, overbuilding and then an inability to stop when all the signs said the party was ending.
...
An estimated 7.6 percent of retail space across the four-county region was vacant at the end of June. That's up from 5.6 percent at the end of last year.
From the Sacramento Bee:
The Sacramento area continues to bleed auto dealerships. The latest to go is Winter Volvo Lincoln Mercury on Florin Road in Sacramento. It will close at the end of the month after 60 years.
...
Winter Volvo Lincoln Mercury will be the sixth area dealership to close in the past five months and the third in the 3800 block of Florin Road.
From the Sacramento Business Journal:
Dale Vaira, president and general manager of the dealership, cited a number of factors that “all happened at once,” which led to the decision to accept the buyout. “The economy is too tough. The real estate bubble has burst. The falling dollar is making prices too high,” consumer confidence is low, and gas prices are high, he said.

4 comments:

Jacob said...

Dale Vaira, president and general manager of the dealership, cited a number of factors that “all happened at once,” which led to the decision to accept the buyout. “The economy is too tough. The real estate bubble has burst. The falling dollar is making prices too high,” consumer confidence is low, and gas prices are high, he said.

And car prices are too high, and cars are not fuel efficient enough, and cars still need gas to run instead of water or solar cells, and people dont need to buy a new car every year... But we'll just blame the things we can't change and forget about the things we could change...

STOP ROSEVILLE CRIME said...

Good point. I believe too that there's a bubble in car prices. People were paying for these bloated cars with fake paper home equity that didn't exist. Dealers got use to morons, er, people, who would pay over and above the sticker price for a car. I think the last stat I saw was the average car price purchased was around $30K. That's not even realistic.

Unknown said...

With the house ATM going away and with credit cards rapidly advancing towards their limits to buy necessities, I think we're about to see a lot of bubbles pop for those things that are "wants" and not "needs."

smf said...

Plenty of commodities went thru a boom phase as well.

RVs recorded increasing sales for a # of years. Ditto for large SUVs. I think the same applies for Harleys. There may be others.

This had little to do with the price of gas and more with having 'toys'.

Once the ATM dried up, so did the demand for these commodities that depended on the ATM.