I promised some good news after my last complete downer posting. Today, I am here to deliver. This news isn't even what I had in mind back then... but this is good stuff.

 

This article is a breath of fresh air:

In specific, the index of pending home sales released by the National Association of Realtors gained 6.3% from 82.5 in November to 87.7 in December. Additionally, the 87.7 reading represents a 2.1% increase from December 2007. That's right... by this measure, December of 2008 was better than December of 2007.

 

The index does point out that the greatest rebound is happening in the South and Midwest while the Northeast and the West are still seeing modest declines. That doesn't surprise me too much. The Northwest typically lags the national market trends. We were a little late to see the effects of the down turn and I suspect we'll be a little behind a rebound.

 

To look at what is going on locally, I put together these graphs from our MLS data. (Click on the image for a larger version.) This first one is the Median Price Change from the previous year in single family homes from King County. All those blue bars in the positive territory were the sweet years. Prices going up by large percentages year after year. In November of 2007 we saw it dip into negative territory representing the first loss in value from the previous year. The losses have piled up and increased through 2008. This graph only goes through December of 2008. The January 2009 data has not been released yet... but that didn't stop me from getting it myself. For all of King County it looks like prices will be down about 10.9% percent compared to January 2008. Not great news. But it is in line with what we have been seeing.

 

Things look better to me over on the Eastside. As compared to King County as a whole, the highs on the Eastside have been higher and the lows have not been as low. That's all good news. The Eastside also shows a more defined trend of the prices working their way out of the negative territory that they have been in recently. So, how does the Eastside look in January? Not as bad... the official numbers have only been released through December. However, I show that the Eastside numbers are down about 6.7% from last year. Again, I think this shows that there is a trend towards the prices bottoming out.  We aren't there yet... but there is light at the end of the tunnel!

 

Next up... Banks need to help themselves!