Thursday, August 28, 2008

Millions of home sellers failed Econ 101?

We are going to keep this simple because millions of people must have failed Econ 101 or missed the month of supply/demand charts and it's influence on prices.

If you had a car dealership full of cars that weren't selling what do you do?Hey maybe have an enormous sale:


This is the current for sale inventory of existing single family homes in the U.S.:

from our friends at Calculated Risk.

Maybe the millions of sellers should pore a huge cup of coffee and wake up to today's market. But, who am I to judge that asking prices are too high? Maybe these sellers are aware of 5 million wealthy Asian and Arab buyers that are dying to move in and pay full sticker price. Sure and Santa Clause hangs out with the tooth fairy in the Cayman Islands during August summer break.



The way this standoff resolves itself is with declining prices to meet the available buyers or staying stuborn and waiting for the market to rise up to the current asking prices. Homes are selling every day... that are priced right. And now for a laugh from my favorite newspaper comic when I was a kid. Calvin and Hobbes.

Larger Version of comic.