Weak December single-family home sales capped a weak year, reports AP today. For the year, sales of single-family homes were down by 13 percent, the biggest drop since a 17.7 percent plunge in 1982. The median price for a single-family home dropped 1.8 percent to $217,000.That was the first annual price decline on records going […]
Continue reading AP: 2007 sales of single-family homes “plunged by the largest amount in 25 years”
AP reports today: The Commerce Department reported Thursday that construction was started on 1.353 million new homes and apartments last year, down 24.8 percent from 2006. It was the second biggest annual decline on record…Many economists believe that the current slump in housing will rival the dive in the late 1970s and early 1980s when […]
The state’s highest court affirmed that towns have the right to prevent developers from building homes that are out of character with their neighbors. In Norwell, a developer had been trying for years to get approval to tear down a 675 square-foot house and replace it with a 1,920 square-foot house. Yesterday’s Boston Globe reports: The court upheld the Town of […]
AP reports today: …new-home sales tumbled by 9 percent in November from October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 647,000. That was the worst showing since April 1995, when the pace of sales was 621,000.The sales pace for November was much weaker than economists were expecting…New-home sales dropped by 19.3 percent in the Northeast…Over […]
Continue reading AP: “New-Home Sales Plunge to Lowest Level in More Than 12 Years”
AP reports today: U.S. home prices fell in October for the 10th consecutive month, posting their biggest monthly decline since early 1991, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index.The record 6.7 percent drop marked the 23rd consecutive month of price deceleration.“No matter how you look at these data, it is obvious that the […]
Continue reading AP: “October Home Prices Post Record Decline”
Smart Growth advocates tell the public that their policies will reduce driving, lower infrastructure costs, protect the environment, and cure social isolation in the suburbs. The actual results have been less than satisfactory, yet Smart Growth continues, in part because city officials and private actors have found it’s a way to access state and federal funds. Randal […]
Continue reading Financial Incentives Distort Smart Growth Debates
Today’s Gazette relays the following reports from AP: State home sales post double-digit declineHome sales in Massachusetts are down by a double-digit percentage for the third month in a row……a 15 percent drop in single-family home sales in November compared with the same month a year ago…Condominium sales fell 23 percent in November.Condo prices are […]
Continue reading AP: Massachusetts home sales post double-digit decline
Home prices need to fall substantially to bring them into alignment with incomes, writes Paul Krugman for The New York Times (12/14/07). This process will jeopardize an enormous number of homeowners and lenders alike: After the Money’s GoneTo restore a historically normal ratio of housing prices to rents or incomes, average home prices would have […]
Continue reading Krugman, NY Times: Home Prices Have Plenty of Room on the Downside
We are not in favor of unsustainable living, but identifying and implementing sustainable practices is more complex than it might appear… It is common knowledge among pollsters that what people say may differ from what they do. This is particularly the case when a question has a “politically correct” answer (see “spiral of silence”).In the case of […]
Continue reading Smart Growth: When Polls and Reality Diverge
The Republican reports on aggressive price cuts needed to sell a group of condos in Florence (12/4/07): William A. Roberts and business partner Andrew Dallin hoped to get about $500,000 each for four condominium units they created at 89-93 Main St. in a building called the Davis Block…According to documents in the Hampshire County Hall of […]
Continue reading Republican: Florence condo units sold at half-price