From CNBC:
Pending sales of existing U.S. homes dropped far more than expected in April to touch a seven-month low, a trade group said on Friday, dealing a blow to hopes of a recovery in the housing market.
The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index dropped 11.6 percent to 81.9 in April, the lowest since September…
And it was, you guessed it, “unexpected”…but I really do wonder, by whom? I mean, I’m not some real estate genius, but I figured it out that the likely outcome of all that has happened is continued recession in the housing market. It isn’t rocket science…but the “experts” were predicting a 1% drop. They were only off by a factor of 11 or so.
Housing won’t get better until the backlog of “shadow inventory” is cleared out and our economy starts to significantly create wealth, again. As long as the government and banks are playing mess-around with the backlog and as long as taxes and regulations remain anti-growth, this will not improve. To nutshell it, as long as Obama is in the White House and Bernanke is at the Federal Reserve, the economy will not improve to the point where the housing market will recover.
