January 20th, 2011 
chadfowler Existing home sales up 12.3% in Dec – The expectation was a 4.7% growth so that is indeed good news, although the median sales price for existing homes fell further to $168k (people are discounting).
The NAR says Distressed homes are 36% of market -That’s a big number, and it is actually even bigger. The NAR number only counts transactions done through Realtors. Thousands of investors are buying property outside the traditional marketplace and that isn’t getting counted.
It’s apparent that distressed home sales will be a huge part of the market in 2011 and short sales will accelerate as banks have to start dumping their inventory of foreclosed homes (the “shadow inventory”).
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