June 25, 2008 at 1:00 pm by Tom Lydon
Bargain hunters once again are emerging, seeking out real estate exchange traded funds (ETFs) after more bad news from the sector was released this morning.
New home sales fell for the sixth time in seven months in May, and median prices kept up the downhill slide as well, reports Martin Crutsinger for the Associated Press. Sales were off by 2.5% from April, and the median price fell 5.7% from one year ago.
Low prices aren’t doing much to boost sales, thanks to tighter lending standards, sending the inventory of unsold homes up to 10.9 months. The figure means it would take that long to exhaust the current supply. Those numbers have economists believing that the prices will keep falling until next spring.
Real estate ETFs are trading higher today, including:
- DJ Wilshire REIT (RWR), down 2.9% year-to-date
- iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate (IYR), down 4% year-to-date
- SPDR S&P Homebuilders (XHB), down 7.5% year-to-date
- iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction (ITB), down 12.6% year-to-date
Tags | GUR, Homebuilders, Media, Real Estate
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