Real Estate in Philadelphia area - How we see it!

Here is what local Real Esate Expert says about state of real estate in Philadelphia area:

"Yesterday the Case Shiller Housing Price Index reported a very slight decrease in home prices for the last quarter, but a modest increase over the past year (Q3 2010 over Q3 2009.) The Case Shiller HPI tracks paired real estate sales in 20 major metropolitan areas. Philadelphia is not one of those tracked. The press will most likely generalize this report as if the entire country were one real estate market, but as we know, it does not apply to the PFR/T market area.

Joel Naroff, an economist who consults for PFR/T issued the following statement about the Case Shiller report:

“While the home buyers’ tax incentives may have created some additional demand, what it really did was change the pattern of demand. Sales from later in the year were pulled backward into the spring. That helped firm up prices but also created the let down we saw during the summer. The price change patterns we saw over the spring and summer are essentially worthless. The real issue is not the government-hyped ups and downs but where prices are going from here. Unfortunately, the data we may get over the next few months could also be misleading because of the problems with mortgage documentation. A slowdown in foreclosures could change the distribution of sales and that could affect price measures. My best guess is once the noise is removed from the data, we will see prices rising in most metropolitan areas across the nation and that is not limited to the twenty in the Case Shiller survey. Large parts of the country have already turned the corner and many are places that were not and will not be overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis. While some of the largest areas are still weak and those areas dominate the data, the smaller and mid-sized metropolitan areas as well as some of the bigger ones (Philadelphia is not included and it is doing just fine, thank you) will continue to get better slowly.” comments by Larry Flick of Prudential Fox and Roach / Trident