You know it can’t be good news when an article about home sales starts out like this:  Analysts’ estimates for July home sales aren’t even close.

And it wasn’t good news.

According to HousingWire.com, the sale of new single family homes hit an all-time low of 276,000 units for the month of July, down over 12 percent from the revised June estimates of 315,000.

That’s 35 percent lower than one year ago.

NAR reported a 27 percent decline in existing home sales for July, which is the lowest in more than a decade.  The estimate on the street had been a 12 percent decline.

Not surprisingly, real estate brokers and agents are feeling the pain.  NAR and other state realtor associations are reporting double-digit drops in membership.  NAR alone has lost 200,000 members since 2006.  Some California agents are reporting business is off some 65 percent from peak years.

New research from The Urban Institute’s MetroTrends, which reports on social and economic trends in urban America, shows that despite a drop in home prices, affordability continues to be a problem for many Americans, especially in coastal metro areas.

According to the MetroTrends data, the share of American households spending more than 30 percent of monthly income on housing costs rose from 30 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2008.

The research also showed that residents of coastal communities have been especially affected, particularly those in California, Florida, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.  According to the report, 12 metro areas in central and southern California have 43 percent or more of their populations spending more than 30 percent of monthly household income on housing costs.

Researchers said that most of the coastal metros suffered a double whammy of unemployment and house price declines, but the impact was particularly severe in Western metros, particularly Los Angeles county, which continues to lead the state in foreclosures.

Things are gonna get better, or things are gonna get worse.  Take your pick.

Two top economists, the kind that institutional investors rely heavily upon, have weighed in on which way the economy is going to go.  And they disagree!  (No surprise there, really.)

Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley is the more optimistic of the two, saying that things will pick up in the second half of this year and unemployment will begin inching its way down.  Deflation?  Fuhgeddaboutit.

Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs says the market is poised for a sharp slowdown in the last half of this year that will send unemployment rates shooting up again, potentially triggering deflation.

Here’s the article from the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/business/economy/06deflation.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Now, if the guys who are supposed to know, don’t know, or can’t agree, what the heck are we simple humans supposed to do?  Hold on tight, I guess.

Bloomberg Businessweek has listed the top 10 markets that will lead the housing market recovery by early 2014 from data provided by Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes and Moody’s Economy.com.

The housing forecast is based on factors that include income growth, unemployment rates, demographic trends, construction costs and foreclosure rates.  There were 384 markets surveyed, and the Top 10 include:

1.  Bremerton-Silverdale, WA (44.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

2.  Bend, OR (33.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

3.  Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI (33.1 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

4.  Napa, CA  (31.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

5.  Carson City, NV  (31.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

6.  Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach, FL (26.9 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

7.  Flagstaff, AZ (26 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

8.  Santa Fe, NM (25.8 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

9.  Cheyenne, WY (23.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

10. Anchorage, AK (20 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

CNNMoney.com reports that several condo markets in the U.S. are seeing units priced “lower than a Toyota Corolla”, at or even below $25,000 in nice neighborhoods.

Median home prices have fallen about 23 percent during the housing market collapse, but condo prices have suffered even more.  According to NAR, nationwide condo prices have fallen about 25 percent since 2007.

NAR reports that in Sacramento, condo prices have plummeted by 59% from where they stood in 2007.  In Vegas, where there are more than 200 condos listed for less than $30,000, median prices for condos have fallen by 66 percent.

Most of the condos mentioned in the report are available because of foreclosure or a short sale.

An Aug. 5 New York Times article noted that Asians are particularly active in U.S. residential real estate markets, including condominiums.  One Hong Kong-based financier was quoted as saying that it is a highly opportune time to buy in the U.S., especially in cities like New York and Los Angeles where many travel several times a year on business.

NAR says that buyers from Hong Kong and China are the fourth most active group buying residential real estate in the U.S., behind Canada, Mexico and the UK.  Foreign investment in U.S. residential real estate for a one-year period ending in March, 2010 totaled $907 billion.

Glimmers of hope for the housing market battle daily with predictions of a double dip.  So why hasn’t the housing market recovered yet, four years after the bubble burst?  U.S. News & World Report listed these six reasons in this week’s issue:

1. Unemployment.  Job growth is key to housing recovery and with the national unemployment rate at 9.5 percent, the jobs just aren’t there yet to support a sustainable recovery for housing.

2.  Household contraction. When people lose their jobs and their homes, they tend to move in with family or friends, constricting the number of new households — a key driver of real estate demand.

3.  Foreclosures.  In May, the housing market had a 8.3 month supply of unsold inventory – a balanced market would have a 6-month or lower supply.  With foreclosure rates continuing to rise, it could take two or more years to work through all the excess inventory.

4.  Tight credit. Even with historically low interest rates on mortgage, if you don’t have good credit (FICO score of 720 or more), you won’t get a mortgage.

5.  Falling prices. Although prices have stabilized somewhat, they are predicted to decline in coming months, further scaring off buyers who don’t want to see their investment lose value.

6.  Selling current home. If homeowners can’t sell their existing homes, they can’t buy a new one.

Recently, an article in Smart Money talked about the psychology of real estate and how large a role it plays in buyers’ home purchase decisions.  Among the findings:

Attractive real estate agents sell more. A study at Old Dominion University showed that men tend to pay more for a home if it’s being sold by an attractive female real estate agent.  Women are also susceptible to an attractive female agent, although not as much as men are.  And if you’re an attractive male real estate agent?  Sorry, it doesn’t seem to matter much to men or women.

Don’t say “new paint”. A Texas study of 60,000 residential real estate transactios showed that listings mentioning new paint, new carpet or new roofing sold for slightly less than those listings that did not mention these cosmetic improvements.  Seems as if buyers hear alarm bells when they see those words, wondering if the cosmetics are, as the research author noted, akin to “putting lipstick on a pig.”

Out-of-state buyers pay more. A Brigham Young University study of Phoenix area apartment sales over a 12-year period showed that out-of-state buyers paid on average more than 5 percent more than in-staters.

Sellers wear rose-colored glasses. Researchers at Yale and Wellesley College survey homeowners each year to gauge their confidence about the value of their homes.  The average respondent was five times more likely to say their own home would increase in value versus the home of their neighbors.

According to Capital Economics, a Toronto-based independent macroeconomic research firm, a double dip in the U.S. housing market is beginning to show itself.

In addition, the Double Dip Begins report found that for every home currently on the market, there are two more waiting to be sold.

In an article at HousingWire.com, the report author Paul Dales noted that, “The expiration of the homebuyer tax credit at the end of April has triggered a double-dip in the housing market, with new home sales falling particularly sharply in May. The only reason why existing home sales did not fall significantly is because they are measured at the contract closing, rather than signing stage.”

Dales’ research also notes that both the foreclosure inventory rate and the mortgage delinquency rate rose in the first quarter, meaning that shadow inventory rose to nearly 7.8 million properties, clearly dwarfing the 3.9 million homes already on the market.

For the full article, go here.

Even in the face of a disastrous dip in new home sales in May (down 30%), many banks have hit the restart button on their mortgage lending operation.

JP Morgan Chase has announced that it will hire 1,200 new mortgage officers for what it anticipates will be a greater need in the not-so-distant future.  Citizens Bank, which is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland and operates in 12 states, is hiring an additional 400 loan officers over the next two years.

Chase said that it is locating new loan officers in the former Washington Mutual branches it acquired in 2008 and also plans to expand its lending operations to other cities it does not currently serve.  Chase says its research shows that branch-based mortgages are less likely to default, so it is shifting to a branch-based lending strategy.

According to forecasts by the Mortgage Bankers Association, home loans for new purchases are expected to increase steadily over the next two years to $916 billion, from an expected $725 billion this year.  However, MBA forecasters say that refinanced loans will drop from $717 billion this year to $474 billion in 2012.

Mortgage rates are now the lowest they have been since the 1950s.

Unfortunately, the low rates also come at a time when unemployment is high and credit scores are low.

The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan fell to 4.69 percent last week; rates for 15- and 5-year mortgages also hit record lows.

Realtors are hoping the new low rates goose the market like the homeowner tax credit did earlier this year, but analysts are not giving them much reason for hope:

“As long as prospective homebuyers are still concerned about their jobs and financial well-being, many will be reluctant to take the plunge, even though affordability has never been better,” said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst with Bankrate.com.

Rates have fallen over the past two months as investors have become nervous about Europe’s debt crisis and the global economy and have shifted money into safe Treasury bonds. The demand has caused Treasury yields to fall. Mortgage rates track those yields.

While mortgages are getting cheaper, low interest rates hurt Americans who are trying to save. Puny rates for savings accounts and CDs are especially hard on people who are living on fixed incomes and earning next to nothing on their money.

Americans normally rush to refinance when rates plummet. But refinancing activity now amounts to less than half the level of early 2009, when long-term rates hovered around 5 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Read the entire article from the San Francisco Chronicle here.