Antidote to housing poison: Clearance sales
If more companies do what Hovanian Enterprises did over the weekend, the housing slump would end much more quickly. The company threw a huge sale, cutting prices by as much as 20 percent. From Barry Ritholtz:
[Hovanian] did more than 2100 sales in 3 days, versus 2539 sales in the entire third quarter. That's ~83% of the prior three months of building and selling in just 3 days.Gee, do you think their homes were previously over-priced? Maybe just a little? Kudos to HOV for finally figuring this out.
There is a lesson in this for Real Estate Agents, home owners, and anyone else who wants/needs to sell their homes: price them realistically, and you can sell them.
It has been more than two years since prices and sales volumes peaked (August 2005), and amazingly, many people are discovering this only now . . .
Comments
A 1 cent sales tax increase is actually a 20% increase in the sales tax. Also no matter were the increases are it always seems to hit the poor and the middle class in the pocket not matter what they say. A 20 sales tax increase, increase in the cig. tax, only the poor and middle class will feel it.
Posted by: Sean Lee | September 19, 2007 1:18 PM