On Friday the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that home sales surged in July. At the same time Ben Bernancky, the Federal Reserve Chairman announced that the economy is “on the cusp of recovery.” Even homebuilders like Pulte and DR Horton saw their stocks jump because of the increase in home sales (and because of this news).
The actual numbers show that home sales increased just under 7½%. That comes out to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million in July. It has been more than ten years since we have seen an increase like this.
We can owe part of this to the fact that July is traditionally a good month for home sales numbers. But another big boost was the taxpayer credit which buyers are scrambling to use before they miss the opportunity which expires November 30th, 2009.
While this is all good news, we are not out of the woods yet. In the same press conference that Bernancky said that we are on this cusp of recovery, he also warned that lending is not back to normal. And without the free flow of credit, lasting economic recovery can not occur. For local information I have already reported on July’s Chandler real estate market trends in another forum (click here) showing that our home sales have more than doubled.
