I know, you’re bored, so am I, so is everybody with real estate news. It’s more of the same. Every week yields headlines of Pending Home Sales Hit New Low, over and over, and over and over…

NAR, in their ever quest to discredit themselves has been revising optimistic estimates since the beginning of the year. These latest numbers announced on Tuesday of Pending Home Sales, showed yet another drop, in this case of 6.5% in August marking its lowest level since the index was created in 2001. I’m torn between talking about it, as it just seems obvious. So who doesn’t understand this out there? Do we still have some unbridled enthusiastic investors and sellers wanting to cash in?

I guess everything is relevant. Those who bought years ago and have seen their homes go from $420,000 to $650,000 should be happy. Yes, a year and half ago they could have gotten $725,000 but they didn’t. That is not the worth of the home now. The home is worth what the current market reflects and buyers are not paying yesterday’s prices. Would you?

NAR is admitting that: “Fewer contracts were being written because of mortgage availability issues, and a separate internal survey of our members shows more than 10% of sales contracts fell through at the last moment in August, primarily the result of canceled loan commitments.” I would venture to say that number is pretty low. The real number might be closer to 30% if not 40 according to what I hear locally.

Yes mortgages are getting harder to find. Even good credit scores don’t guaranty a loan. In the space of a week in August we went from having a FICO score of over 720 for a normal loan to over 740, plus 20% down and proof of 6 to 12 months reserve in the bank to pay the mortgage. Consider a $700,000 loan, that’s $140,000 down payment plus close to another $50,000 in the bank account. I don’t know about you but seeing how most people live above their means, there are not too many who can show that kind of savings.