The Declining Market

Jobs are one of the major indicators of declining market.  In November 2008, payrolls took a deep dive as 533,000 jobs were cut.  Now that our unemployment is at 6.7% we are at all 15 year high.  According to Market Watch,

“It was only the fourth time in the past 58 years that payrolls had fallen by more than 500,000 in a month. Since the recession began 11 months ago, a total of 1.9 million jobs have been lost. Job losses in September and October were revised much lower.

Some interesting graphs from various sources (referenced on graph).   

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As stated by MSN Money,

“More than 1% of all households slipped into foreclosure in 2007, as more borrowers failed to keep up on their mortgages. Nevada led the nation with the highest foreclosure rate, while California had the highest total number of foreclosures.”

Read the full story from MSN.com

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If you are interested in contacting any of our Market Specialists for free counseling, email Customer Support or call at 1-800-881-1479

Here are the 10 top cities for decreasing property values (as compared to a year ago):

1. Sacramento, CA (-18.5%)
2. Las Vegas, Nev. (-17.2%)
3. San Diego, Calif. (-17.1%)
4. Tampa, Fla. (-11.7%)
5. Los Angeles, Calif. (-10.7%)
6. Miami, Fla. (-10.6%)
7. Phoenix, Ariz. (-9.5%)
8. Jacksonville, Fla. (-8.7%)
9. Detroit, Mich. (-7.7%)
10. Atlanta, GA (-7.1%)

Click here for the full slideshow from Forbes…

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If you are interested in contacting any of our Market Specialists for free counseling, email Customer Support or call at 1-800-881-1479

As of today, February 16, more are more signs are leading towards a further declining market:

•  U.S import prices went up by 1.7% which was driven by increased prices for oil
• Export prices increased 1.2% which was the largest jump since 1989.
• The Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment dropped to 69.6 which was the lowest it has been since 1992.  These numbers are representative of the recessions in the mid 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s.
• Stock prices fell due to concerns that there was a slowing in consumer spending.  Dow Jones was down 28 points to 12,348.

It was reported that over 17,000 jobs were lost last month. Most of the jobs were lost in construction, the mortgage industry and in real estate (no surprise there!). This doesn’t even include all of the real estate agents who are still technically employed with a broker but are not seeing any income due to the drastic drop in sales.

Bush couldn’t have said it any better in this article, “There’s serious signs that … the economy is weakening”.

Click here for the full story from Yahoo! Finance…

Though the “R” word has been on the tip of everyone’s tounge for the nation, today MSN posted an article stating that both California and Florida (two of our largest US economies) are pratically in a recession. The primary factory is contributed to the continuing declines in both the number of home sales and sale prices:

“Existing home sales fell 36 per cent in California and 30 per cent in Florida in the year to November 2007, against a national decline of 20 per cent. Median sale prices fell 12 per cent in California and 10 per cent in Florida, against only 3 per cent nationwide.