market trends July 28, 2009

Quadrant boosts production in response to home sales

O ur area’s largest homebuilder has boosted production from 2 homes a day, to 3 homes a day in response to the uptick in home sales. Quadrant homes are in the $200-300,000 range and are lined up exactly where demand currently lies. I wouldn’t expect to see some of our higher end home builders jump on the bandwagon just yet as there seems to be plenty of inventory in the high end, and relatively few sales. Read the article in the Seattle Times here.

A widely watched index, The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index of 20 major cities, shows home prices posted their first monthly increase since the summer of 2006, indicating prices are finally stabilizing. The report released Tuesday rose 0.5 percent from April, but was still 17.1 percent below May a year ago.

The 10-city index rose 0.4 percent from April, but was off 16.8 percent from May last year. It was the fourth consecutive month both indexes didn’t post record annual decline. Home prices are now at levels not seen since mid-2003.