So is the trend up or down

The above headlines might seem nonsensical when put beside each other, but the reason these respected organizations are giving US housing a big thumbs up in one month and a big thumbs down just a few short weeks later is easy to explain. They are looking at housing trends over a period of weeks rather than months or years. In addition to that, the last few weeks have been particuraly volitile because homebuyers were rushing to meet a government imposed deadline.

The well publicised first time homebuyers credit expired on June 30 and so a property sale must be completed by that date if the new owner wanted to get his or her tax credit. As any economist would easily have predicted, the average for June and July was normal, but sales that would have naturally closed in July were pushed forward to June.

And so, June sales were higher than they should have been Sharp jump! and July sales were lower than they should have been Record low!

Tampa Florida

Let´s take Tampa Florida as an example (which is where our stunning Waterside at Coquina Key development is located).

If you look at the June (2155) and July (1486) sales for 2010, they average 1820 sales per month. Sales in June and July 2009 were 1876 and 1885 each. Sales in June and July 2008 were 1481 and 1431 each.

Nothing too exciting there - this year was same as last year and much better than 2008. The expiry of the tax credit simply meant that June and July this year are particularly bad months to examine housing trends.

The six monthly figures for Tampa are a little more useful

Feb-July 2008 9,497 sales

Feb-July 2009 9,651 sales

Feb-July 2010 10,731 sales

Doesn´t exactly lend itself to dramatic headlines does it

Nationwide

The national figures are even more illustrative. There were 4.58 million properties available for sale in July 2008. In July 2010 there was 3.98 million. In other words, even with record foreclosures in the past two years, there were so many people buying properties that housing inventory levels had fallen by 600,000.

Let´s look at an even longer timeframe (and I´ll stop boring you with stats after this!). Even allowing for a poor July, Annual housing sales in the USA should be approx 5 million in 2010. To place in perspective, annual sales averaged 4.9 million in the past 20 years, and 4.4 million over the past 30 years.