Mohamed Ibrahim’s Blog

An article appeared on the wall street journal online, suggesting that the housing troubles are over. There’s some interesting analysis over there that shows why it is over. Another article appeared yesterday also on WSJ, that shows more charts suggesting that the housing problems are over. This one shows a chart showing that the housing market reached the same bottom from which the housing market bounced up every time. Basically, it applies a similar theory to the support and resistance ideas used in the stock market.

However, there’s a couple of things that tells me we might still go in the flat bottom till the end of 2009. First Fannie Mae just expected prices to further drop. The chart in the second WSJ shows the market bouncing up after a recession, and we’re not in a technical recession yet.

I will update the chart that I used to analyze my local market, and will share it on the weblog. I agree that we are in the market bottom, but I think this bottom will be little bit more flat than just April of 2008.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Things are bouncing back, and I can tell! More showing requests than the last quarter. Still less than last year, but much better than last quarter. I previously argued the possibility of the market bouncing back, and it seemed possible through the market cycles. However, we also argued the strength of the market bounce and whether the fix the feds did is a temporary or permanent one. Lowering the interest rate is of course a temporary solution that increases the money with the people through the people borrowing more credit, and in the same time cause inflation due to the increase of the money supply.

So we should be happy that the market is bouncing back, yet be careful because at the end of that short peak there might be another trough - unless serious measures are taken by the government to seek permanent economic fix through bringing manufacturing jobs back in the US.

Reports have been going around today sourcing from NAR that the revised figures of last year existing home sales is down 0.49% from last year, which puts us at a 9-year low. The current market has been described as “the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s”. No one sees a fast turnaround here. In my previous post, I was anticipating that we’re now in a local minimum, and will see a peak of light by the end of the year.

I think now we will be very very focused on the Fed’s statement in front of congress on Wednesday and Thursday, plus the election process and how the three possible presidents plan to solve this mess.

This is an updated chart to the posts I had made earlier. At that time I was hoping that the curve pointing up is pointing to a recovering real estate market, but actually it looks like there are minor cycles repeating and we’re still going down. Worse, those minor cycles seem to repeat every two years - and now we are in a minor cycle trough.

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