Today there is more difficult news for sellers of U.S. real estate as median sales prices are down 7.7% for the first quarter of ’08 versus the same period in ’07.  The more telling number is that prices are down 4.8% versus the last quarter of 2008.  Annualized, that would be a nearly 20% decline coming in 2008.  It’s hard to imagine that could happen here, but given the very difficult state of so many markets across the country, it’s possible that the overall number could see such a decline given what’s happening in big markets such as California, Florida, Arizona, Ohio and Michigan.

Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist for the National Association of Realtors said the following:

These are highly unusual results because there were very few jumbo loan originations in the latest quarter, so sales are much slower in high-cost areas, and at the same time foreclosures related to subprime mortgages rose.

Here is the Star Tribune’s article about the new real estate numbers.

It’s my opinion that we’ll continue to see this kind of continual bad news for some time; however, the market will have long turned before it starts showing up in the statistics.  If all you’re doing is watching the statistics like these published by the National Association of Realtors in order to pick the bottom, you won’t be able to do so.  You will miss it.