Ability Realty

Just as I thought. The Month of October was very slow. Sold units went down by 111 units and listings under contract went down by 81 units. The reason the Average went up is that 4 more homes over $1,000,000 sold in October over September. This helped bring the Average up. The one thing that was good is the Median Sales price stayed the same at $180,500. Active listings went up by 130 units, but this is not too bad if you factor in the lower number of listings under contract.
 

In doing some research for some homes in the South and Southwest I found a large number had gone under contract in the first part of November. Most of these were Short Sale homes and will take a while to get closed. Short Sales and Lender owned homes are taking up to two to five months to close. Many buyers get discouraged with the slowness and cancel their contract before it is finally accepted.
 
Wells Fargo (400,000), Bank of America (400,000) and now CitiGroup (500,000) are starting the process of readjusting loans that are in default and holding up the foreclosure process on the new ones that are just getting into the system. This will go a long way in keeping the owners in their homes. If they can stop the large number of foreclosures it will allow the housing market to hit the bottom and start coming back again. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are also doing the same. The big Bail out that was supposed to help will not even happen in the way they presented it. The money will go to the banks and it is your guess as to what will happen with that. I personally am not satisfied with what is going on. Housing started the problem and is still a problem, but not much is being done by the Bail out.