Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

The good news with the Kansas City Real estate market is that Freddie Mac reports that average 30 year interest rates dipped to 4.97% nationally last week. Interest rates below 5% are absolutely amazing and too many of us take today’s low interest rates for granted. One day, poof, they’ll be gone.  I’m going to do a post sometime soon that shows just how much a borrower  saves by purchasing with a 5% interest versus the 9% rate I had on my first home in the early 1990’s. The difference is truly astounding. Anyhow, so what other good news is there out there, other than the home buyer tax credit (that is keeping home sales moving along with smoke and mirrors)?  I had to dig a little but I found that existing home sales in the Kansas City metro rose around 8% in January (compared to 1/09). That’s certainly good news but comes with the caveat that it’s being compared against a month that was just plain horrid.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

So moving on to the bad news, my National Association of Realtors reports this week that existing homes sales fell an unexpected 7.2% in January (compared to 1/09).  The sales rate in January was the lowest since June of last year. Ouch. And now for the ugly news… New home construction sales nationally fell 6.1% in January (compared to 1/09) to reach the lowest number of home sales since records started being kept back in 1963. Local new home sales news was bad too, with the number of new home sales falling 28% in January (compared to 1/09).  In case you couldn’t tell, it’s still a Buyer’s market out there. I can’t wait until this market turns and I get to write hundreds of posts about how great the market is. Ah, the good old days…

Posted by Jason A. Brown