A year after the housing slump began, the spring selling season is off to a rocky start with a glut of unsold properties and buyers like the Binghams putting off purchases, thwarting any chance of a recovery. The National Association of Home Builders in Washington now expects sales to fall for the sixth consecutive quarter after last month predicting a gain. The biggest stock market rout in four years last week, a jump in subprime mortgage failures and concerns about a possible recession are keeping consumers on edge.
Miami-based Lennar Corp., the biggest U.S. builder by revenue, expects new home deliveries to tumble 20 percent this year. Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. of Red Bank, New Jersey, the industry's sixth-largest company, reported a fiscal first-quarter loss after the number of contracts signed slid 23 percent.
"I'd say about 70 percent of the homes aren't priced competitively to sell at this time,'' Bingham said. "I don't want to be the guy who pays too much and then watches the value of my real estate fall through the floor.''
As 2007 began, the housing rebound proved elusive. U.S. new- home sales fell in January by the most in 13 years, the Commerce Department said last week. The annualized rate dropped to 937,000, lower than any economist had forecast in a Bloomberg survey and down from the 1.12 million pace in December.
In the current quarter, the median probably will fall 4.5 percent from a year earlier to $233,700, he said. The second quarter's median may decline 4.7 percent, followed by a 2 percent drop in the third quarter, he said.
