The median price of a home fell to $220,900, an 0.8 percent fall from the midpoint selling price a year ago. It marked the ninth straight decline in the median price.
Comparing the national sales median price, $220,900. Checking the median price from Hardtack, it reports the median number as $276,002. Why the difference? Let’s dive into the guts of Hardtack and figure out.
Hardtack works by reading data from the web front end of the MLS systems. This means we are tracking the prices that people are asking for their properties, what they hope to get. Nation wide, in almost every market the inventory keeps climbing higher, over 1.9 Million single family homes on the market as of today. In many places across the US, sellers are asking more than what most buyers can now afford to pay. Either because they think their property is worth more than the market will currently bear, or sadly because they have used modern exotic financing approaches such as cash out re-fi’s and home equity lines of credit and they are trying to sell for how much they owe, which in some cases is more than they can possibly get.
Median Selling Price: $220,900
Median Asking Price: $276,002
That $56,000 gap signals a fundamental sickness in the housing market, one that will need to be worked out over the next few years.
I can thank my old friend and, at the time, fellow BYU computer science undergrad Mark Savon for setting me on the path of having seen every Star Wars film on opening day. Mark told me about this nifty new movie that was coming out, Star Wars, and suggested we double-date (with our wives) to go see it up in Salt Lake City on a big screen. The ladies were skeptical, to say the least, but allowed us to drag them along (along with our nine-month-old daughter, Jacqui Beth). So, on May 25, 1977, we all were sitting in the pre-multiplex Century Theater (just one large screen — what a concept), waiting for the film to start.
The resurrected Fox fanfare was fun, and the scrolling text at the opening was great. Pan down to a planet…a space ship being fired upon…the pursuing ship coming onto the screen — and coming — and coming — and coming, while the Century’s great sound system let me feel the near-subsonic rumbling of the Imperial Star Destroyer in my chest. I was blown away and, by then, completely lost in the film. The rest of the movie flew by, and we left the theater laughing and talking about what fun it was. My wife and I would go back and see the film six more times during the year or so it was in theatrical release — which still remains a personal record for the number of times I have seen a given film in theaters. In those 30 years since, only one other film has made my jaw drop the same way in its opening sequence: Raiders of the Lost Ark. And my now-former wife Marla and I still quote Star Wars lines back and forth at each other, even 30 years later.
The second film, The Empire Strikes Back, was even better, which I attribute in part to the change in directors (Irvin Kershner) but even more so to the influence (albeit disputed) of Leigh Brackett on the screenwriting team. Nobody wrote dark, flawed-and-reluctant-hero space opera like Leigh Brackett, and the film itself remains my favorite science fiction film of all time, edging out even Serenity. In fact, TESB is my second-favorite film of all time, bested only by Casablanca, with which it shares a few striking similarities in setting, tone, and characters (e.g., compare Rick with Han Solo — and note that both shot a man in cold blood).
The third film, Return of the Jedi, was great, but it could have been even better that TESB if (a) Leigh Brackett had lived and (b) Lucas hadn’t insisted on the damned Ewoks. Even space opera has to play within certain rules, and the idea that short, slow, waddling Ewoks with clubs, spears and stone could slow down, much less defeat, even the nortoriously bad-shooting Imperial Stormtroopers was just silly. Still, the final endpiece, with the confrontation between Luke, Vader and the Emperor, with Luke’s willingness to die rather than kill his father and convert to the Dark Side, was very powerful, and it was a great wrap-up to the series.
We should have had some warning of what was to come with the special editions of the original trilogy. While (unlike some) I thought the new and improved special effects were great, I was appalled at Lucas changing two of the key character defining moments in the films: Han pre-emptively shooting Greeto in the cantina, and Luke dropping silently to his death within Cloud City rather than joining Vader (Lucas added him screaming as he fell). (I believe there was yet another change in ROTJ along the same lines, but I can’t recall what it is as I sit here.)
And then we get to the prequel trilogy: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. With these three films, George Lucas managed to take what was probably the most beloved series of films in cinema history and turn them into a train wreck, a laughingstock. A very lucrative train wreck/laughingstock, it’s true — but these are films that become even more painful and/or boring on repeated viewing.
Example #1: I saw Attack of the Clones on opening day at the Uptown Theater in Washington DC (a wonderful theater, and during our last four years in DC within walking distance of our house). While there were some great moments (most notably Yoda’s fight with Count Dooku, though even that had a plot hole or two in it), there were far more wince-inducing moments (e.g., virtually every scene with Anakin and Padme). Wanting to ensure that I wasn’t just dealing with overly high expectation, I saw it two more times while it was in theatrical release. During the third viewing — a digital projection out in Northern Virginia that my daughter Salem and I went to — I found myself dozing off during the film, and that in spite of having consumed a large (theater-sized) diet Coke.
Example #2: Some months back, I was traveling on business and happen to come upon Revenge of the Sith playing on HBO while flipping through channels in my hotel room. Shorn of widescreen presentation and thundering sound, the film was almost unwatchable; I changed the channel after a minute or two.
The phenomenon is not unique to Lucas; Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski created one of the most delightful and watchable films of the past 20 years, Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, then followed it up with two bloated, turgid (but lucrative, I must confess) sequels. I have watched the original Pirates, piecemeal or in its entirety, many times on cable and DVD; like About a Boy, it is one of those rare films that you can pick up and watch at any point and still have a great time. By contrast, I think that I have watched the second film (Dead Man’s Chest) a grand total of three times (twice in theaters, once on DVD), and I’m not entirely sure that I’ll go back to see the third film (At World’s End) a second time in theaters (yes, saw it on opening day yesterday).
But one has to wonder: just as Lucas paved the road for the summer blockbuster with Star Wars, did he likewise pave the road for the wretched follow-up with the prequel trilogy? And who will break the curse? ..bruce..
…is that he was interviewed by BusinessWeek.com, which has now written up the OSG Hardtack website:
Finally, I promised earlier that I’d explain why OSG built this site — since my first question upon finding this site was, “Who are these guys and why did they create this?” One of OSG’s specialties is designing systems for large financial-service firms that captures and collects data from a company’s internal databases and then allow top execs to spot emerging trends — for instance, helping a bank to spot real-time trends in demand for mortgages, city-by-city, which types of mortgages are hot, etc.
OSG wanted to provide prospective clients with an example of what the firm is capable of doing, and decided to build their prototype around housing values, in part because it’s a topic of universal interest and partly because their bots could easily collect listings data from NAR chapter sites around the country.
National single family home inventory just went over 1.9 Million over on the Hardtack experiment
For a while a few weeks ago it looked like the inventory rocket was leveling out, but in reality it was taking a short breather before climbing ever higher. I have no idea when this will slow down, but it is becoming rather impressive. A few caveats:
1) Rest assured this is not all of the houses for sale in the US, we are only tracking the 300 largest metropolitan areas.
2) The data is not 100% accurate, because I am sure there are some funky things in the MLSs
We are pretty much at 1 year since I ran the first experiments, so we can do some interesting comparisons (the web site only shows data from early Feb, because that was the real start date for the broader effort).
Bakersfield Single Family May 29, 2006 5,688 Units: $325,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 6,717 Units: $280,000 Median Price
1,029 (+18%) more houses in the MLS than Memorial Day last year, and a $45,000 (-13%) drop in median price.
Bloomington, IL Single Family May 30, 2006 1,563 Units: $174,900 Median Price
May 24, 2007 1,020 Units: $192,900 Median Price
-543 (-35%) fewer houses in the MLS than Memorial Day last year, and a $18,000 (+10%) appreciation in median price. So the bubble is still cruising along in this small town in the midwest.
Boise, ID Single Family May 30, 2006 4,119 Units: $269,950 Median Price
May 24, 2007 6,928 Units: $272,000 Median Price
2,809 (68%) more houses in the MLS than Memorial Day last year, and $2,050 (1%) appreciation in median price. Big inventory overhang there.
Boston, MA Single Family May 30, 2006 22,643 Units: $450,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 30,437 Units: $397,500 Median Price
7,794 (34%) more houses on the market, and a $52,500 (-12%) drop in median price.
Cleveland, OH Single Family May 30, 2006 16,029 Units: $164,900 Median Price
May 24, 2007 26,752 Units: $149,900 Median Price
10,723 (67%) more houses in the MLS than a year ago, and $15,000 (-9%) drop in median price.
Denver, CO Single Family May 30, 2006 20,818 Units: $269,500 Median Price
May 24, 2007 25,257 Units: $286,500 Median Price
4,439 (21%) more houses in the MLS than last Memorial Day, and a $17,000 (6%) median price increase
Kansas City, MO Single Family May 30, 2006 20,803 Units: $179,900 Median Price
May 24, 2007 20,390 Units: $180,900 Median Price
Kansas City is holding its own with inventory and price essentially flat from a year ago
Las Vegas, NV Single Family May 30, 2006 17,728 Units: $369,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 24,929 Units: $336,000 Median Price
Las Vegas has 7,201 (41%) more houses in the MLS with a -$33,000 (-9%) Median price drop from Memorial Day last year. If you want to see pain, lets look at Condos:
May 30, 2006 4.070 Condos: $225,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 6,454 Condos: $216,900 Median Price
Thats a 59% inventory increase year over year and 4% decline in median price
Phoenix, AZ Single Family May 30, 2006 32,395 Units: $341,990 Median Price
May 24, 2007 40,316 Units: $325,000 Median Price
For Phoenix that means 24% more inventory and a median price drop of 5%
Sacramento, CA Single Family May 30, 2006 14,762 Units: $458,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 16,494 Units: $414,000 Median Price
Sacramento, not as bad as I expected with a 12% year over year inventory increase and a 10% median price drop.
San Diego, CA Single Family May 30, 2006 11,964 Units: $640,000 Median Price
May 24, 2007 13,256 Units: $580,000 Median Price
San Diego comes in with 11% more inventory than Memorial Day last year and a 9% drop in median price
Our house faces Pikes Peak, some 50 miles to the south, so I can personally attest as to the significant amount of snow on it as we approach June. But here’s the article:
Last May, Teresa Taylor was watching climbers pad up to the summit of Pikes Peak in shorts and sneakers. This year, she’s warning everyone that beyond Barr Camp, you’d better be dressed for the worst.
This is the snowiest spring on Pikes Peak in more than a decade. Barr Camp recorded 231 inches of snow this winter. (It only saw 50 inches in 2006.)
Hikers venturing above treeline will find that the peak is more wintry this May than it usually is in January, and they should be prepared.
“The snow is still waist-deep in places, and we just got more today,†Taylor, the caretaker at Barr Camp, said Wednesday. Every day, she warns people that the trail is buried.
