Existing Home Sales Up 5.1% In February

Good news…maybe.

WASHINGTON – A real estate group says sales of existing homes rose from January to February in an unexpected boost for the slumping U.S. housing market as buyers took advantage of deep discounts on foreclosures.
The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of existing homes grew 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 4.72 million last month, from 4.49 million units in January. It was the largest sales jump since July 2003.

On one hand, maybe this is just the market at work. Maybe responsible buyers are acting in a market that has a glut of pre-owned homes being unloaded by banks who got them through foreclosure or people who just can’t afford them any more and need to be rid of them. There are a lot of bargains out there for level-headed real estate buyers.
On the other hand, I worry that we’re seeing a re-inflation of the housing bubble that will lead to another inevitable pop like the one we saw last year that has us in the economic mess we’re in right now. I hear stories about the FDIC pressuring banks into lending more under the Community Reinvestment Act, and I see the government spending hundreds of billions on propping up the banks that made the bad loans that got us in this mess, and I see Obama making more government subsidy available to entice banks into making more loans.
If we’re buying more homes again because government intervention in the credit markets is making more “free money” loans available we’re going to end up repeating the history of the last two years again in the future.