“For the first time this year, sales of Massachusetts single-family homes declined in July, posting a 26 percent decrease from July 2009, according to the latest report by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
Single-family home sales dropped 26.15 percent in July, reversing a trend of 12 straight months of increases. A total of 3,668 single-family homes sold in July, down from 4,967 a year earlier. This is the fewest number of sales in the month of July since 1990. In the first five months prior to July, sales …

An article in the New York Times, “Why Home Prices Keep Falling,” describes the plight of U.S. home prices and the expectation that they will continue to fall through 2010, maybe even 2011.
“Even the federal government has projected price decreases through 2010. As a baseline, the stress tests recently performed on big banks included a total fall in housing prices of 41 percent from 2006 through 2010. Their “more adverse” forecast projected a drop of 48 percent — suggesting that important housing ratios, like price to rent, and price to …

I don’t agree but economist Christopher Thornberg thinks so. As quoted in the Mortgage Insider, he says:
“I argue… that foreclosures are good for the economy. If someone stops paying their over-sized mortgage on a deeply underwater house they have a lot more money to spend on things like iPods and clothes. So in a sense all these foreclosures are probably one of the things stabilizing consumer spending. That’s far more important to the economy than whether people pay off their mortgages.”
He continues…
“The financial meltdown is done… and what you call …

Short Sale*. Either that term makes you shiver in despair, or makes you shiver in anticipation of “snagging a great deal.” It is no secret that the current market conditions are great for the right buyer—one who is ready, willing, and yet patient for the right opportunity.
CNN Money presents the following 7 tips to “Snag a great deal on a short sale,” which, for each, I’ve chimed in with my comments parentheses. (For a larger description of each tip, click the title of the article for the complete report.)

Know …