Posts tagged ‘economic conditions’

Housing in its “Fifth Inning”?

According to Barry Ritholtz and Aaron’s discussion in an article from Yahoo Finance titled “Home Prices Fall to 2003 Levels; When Will Housing Hit Bottom?” on Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price index numbers from September, they said housing is “maybe in its fifth inning”, using baseball terms to show the progress of the market. September prices in Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home-price index fell 0.6% from August, and are down 3.9% compared to last year. Also CoreLogic released its newest figures on the housing market which showed 22.1% (10.7 million) homes with mortgages were underwater in the third quarter. It is definitely a buyer’s market because sellers are forced to take steep discounts on their homes and interest rates for 30-year fixed rate mortgages are at historic lows.