Homes humping the economy down?

The title may sound a bit crass but given the fact that this is the sixth straight month that the sales data for homes has fallen flat, one cannot help to think but exactly that. The homes data just seems to be heading in one direction and that is the basement level. This is the sixth straight month where the sales of new homes has fallen low and analysts are predicting that this is bound to get even worse.
With unemployment increasing day by day and with the consumer confidence at an all time low, people are just not interested in dumping all of their life savings on an asset that may well be devalued in a few months time.

But then again, there is the other side of the coin; the prices of new homes are at an all time low. The days of when you thought that the mansion next door must be well above your price range are long gone. These days, one never knows what one can get within ones price range, who knows, it may even turn out to be a mansion in Bel-air. With such low prices one would have thought that the Realtors would have to be beating off the crowd with a huge stick. But the sad reality is that even such low rates are not enough to jump start a customer’s enthusiasm these days.

Even with rates of new homes slipping by as much as 4% the crowd just does not seem to be knocking at the front door. What is a disturbing tendency in all of this is the fact that there are over 4 million homes unsold and with the current rates of home sales, we may well have to wait for nearly 10 months to clear up the deck.
Naturally when things are bleak, we are always told to look for the silver lining. So far the only one that I can find is the fact that I could afford that mansion at Bel-air, if I wanted to, but then again that would mean locking up my funds in an already cash strapped market. That is the quandary that every consumer finds himself or herself in at the moment!

The DOW zooms up by 250 points!

Finally the FED has managed to unify its plan with the other central banks and thereby alleviate the current credit crisis. The credit crunch is so bad that getting a car loan is in fact even more difficult than buying a car from the dealer on a standby basis. The markets reacted favorably to the news that all the central banks have managed to get moving on a common plan to alleviate the Credit crunch that is so evident in the markets today.
The DOW which had sagged unfavorably after the recent FED rate cut, seems to have finally shaken off the Bear claws and has started moving in the right direction,up. But of course, as soon as the sub prime disaster had hit the markets, this is what all the banks should have done. It has taken them this long to do what should have been done a long time back, but the investors and that includes me as well are all happy that they have finally show some backbone and have acted. One can only hope and pray that this momentum in the markets will continue on!