Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Home price declines in the U.S. accelerated in the second quarter, dropping by a record 15.6 percent from a year earlier, as foreclosures weighed on values.
The median price of an existing single-family home dropped to $174,100, the most in records dating to 1979, the National Association of Realtors said today. Total sales rose 3.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.76 million from the first quarter and fell 2.9 percent from 2008’s second quarter.
Remember, Cramer said housing bottomed June 30th.
Jim, we haven't seen seen a decline in the second derivative. In fact, housing prices dropped by a RECORD 15.6% in the second quarter.
Record - you know, never dropped this fast year-over-year before? Yeah.
But remember Jim - you promised your viewers that it was over. That it was ok - and safe - to go back into the market. You in fact told everyone last night to buy stocks again, and you were in fact on an unmitigated pumpfest.
The facts don't bother you do they Jim? I'll lay odds you won't mention this report tonight on your show, nor will you apologize for being wrong.
For the market to bottom it must stop going down in price. There is no indication that the rate of acceleration is even slowing, and in fact we had this embedded in the Bloomberg report:
“I don’t think we’re at a bottom yet in home prices,” said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis. “There’s also a pretty big shadow supply of houses. People are kind of waiting for the bottom but there’s a pent-up supply out there.”
He ought to know since Wells is one of the many banks that has sent out thousands (if not tens of thousands) of NODs but then has not followed up with an actual foreclosure and resale - the event that would force them to mark their losses and eat them.
Never mind this bit of stupidity:
Home prices are falling even as a survey of economists indicates that the U.S. economy is recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s. The economy will expand 2 percent or more in four straight quarters through June, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median of 53 forecasts in the monthly Bloomberg News survey.
Note that at the present price of the stock market it is pricing in not 2% growth for four sequential quarters but five percent, and this assumes that interest rates stay exactly where they are - that is, nothing disrupts the long end of the curve and forces rates higher (if that does happen, then P/E multiples get compressed and the "fair value" price of stocks will fall.)
Since it is effectively impossible for rates to go below zero, there is no possibility of P/E expansion from the interest rate environment - we're at the maximum.
Tout TV is at it again, despite the facts.
