Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
YPNT - half way through the week. Eagerly awaiting 10k.
I know it's NYSE trading system for OTC stocks, but whose to say that it is only used by one big seller.
ARCA - What's the obsession?
Can you enlighten me why ARCA is so important?
Len -
True, though I did explain my position is just a short term transaction. I guess my opening comment was a little rough around the edges, saying I made a buck already on the downturn. Forgot how things can be so easily misconstrued on the net.
Dude,
Are you trying to prove something? Like I said we have different objectives. Mine short term, obviously yours long term. Thanks to trailing stop. Out at 6.42.
There's the difference. I'm just putting in a S/T short position.
CVV - Maybe it was a bit overstated to say it was a story stock. However, news of it's earnings was back on 11/14 and it's old news of it's involvement in nanotech. The recent press release on 12/4 that caused the recent spike, while interesting will not bring anything to bottom line just yet. Granted there could be upside, however I'm just making a short term trade based on the fact that the 12/4 news caused a spike that will come back down. No more, no less.
Knowledge - CVV. Just took a small 1k position to help pay the rent. The press release that they sent out that pushed it to the 7.50 level was fluff. Mildly significant news, but nothing that should cause it to go up 75% in two days. I can see it settling in the 4 region in a couple weeks without any other news.
KIK - CVV just a story stock. Took a short yesterday at 7.15 after your post. Definitely not a long term short, but a quick trade. I'm looking for a break below 6 and I'll reassess the position afterwards.
schmoopy - re: CVV
One of the fellow VMC'ers (Knowledge is King) recommended a short yesterday. I followed his advice and made a buck on the decline.
kipp - re: 200%
Just for balance on your story. Anything you've been burned on?
Looking for an early Xmas present in that 10k.
In for almost 100k shares from .76 up to .88. I'm waiting for the next 10k filing. Hopefully it's insightful.
OT - Everyone I know has been perplexed on why I haven't bought yet. For the last 3 years I've held out on buying, but only have been seeing fruits bear over the last year. I may dabble in the housing market during the seventh inning stretch.
Rogue - great find.
Where do you get this info? I've only gotten through three pages so far, but I had to respond back. This looks like it deeply expands on my comments and thoughts. I'll be sure to finish this article and than look to prepare my bomb shelter. While energy and metals have been on the front burner of commodity expansion, I wonder if agricultural is the next wave? Corn has experienced a boom riding on the coattails of expansion of ethanol use. Anybody care to espouse their views on agriculture?
leninman - Thanks, I'm just a lowly freerider so no PM capabilities.
I've recently gotten back into some of the energy service companies like (CFK & FTK). They've pulled back far enough and can still make money in this somewhat high, but not absurdly high price environment.
stk pkr - No one knows for sure, how much this run up in metal's prices is due to actual demand or by speculators. Whose to say there is not some hedge fund out there buying out the physical inventory of metals. It could be another Hunts Brother's like scenario. Look at how Amaranth got squeezed by NG. Sure they made buku bucks after Katrina, but prices collapsed down to $4 for NG causing them to go belly up. There are definitely a lot more traders in the commodities business w/ all banks and hedgefunds squeezing into this space. While I do have some money in metals, I'm thinking I have to be somewhat cautious.
For example look at homebuilders they are cheap on a PE basis, but historically that is the case at the peak. We are probably in the top of the third inning of a housing bust and PE's are in the 5's. Some noted analysts say price to book for homebuilders is cheap, but look at all the writedowns causing book value to shrink. If I had the guts I would still be short homebuilders.
I'll play devil's advocate, but historically metal prodcers have low PE's as they approach their peaks. So question is will they be increasing production or will they be gaining higher prices. The metal stocks also have been increasing for approx. 5 years now. How much further gains can we extract from this sector? We'll possibly need to look for another engine to hitch our caboose. Not sure which one yet.
I agree with you. From what I recall reading about the late 80's & early 90's, condos declined rather significantly. My guess is that condo owners may tend to be more transient and more speculative in nature than single family homeowners.
Another sign things are teetering in RE land.
From the NY Times...
Farewell, Condo Cash-Outs
By MOTOKO RICH
When developers in Arlington, Va., threw a party 18 months ago to showcase plans for Clarendon 1021, a condominium development that had not yet been built, 3,600 prospective buyers stood in line just for the chance to book reservations to bid on the apartments.
Now, less than a year after the building opened, speculators in this and other buildings are putting dozens of units on the market at the same time, causing asking prices and profits to slip.
Of 23 investors who sold since Clarendon 1021 opened last summer, the three most recent sellers actually lost money, after paying all fees, and average profits in the building have declined since August, said Frank Borges LLosa,) owner of FranklyRealty.com.
The Great Condo Gold Rush is fading from memory and the Great Sell-Off has begun. "Money Down! Motivated Seller, Want More? Just Ask!" screamed an investor's online advertisement last week for a one-bedroom apartment in Clarendon 1021 that had never been lived in.
"I hate it when people say prices can never go down," said Mr. LLosa, a resident of the building. "The speculators make the profits more volatile."
Over the last few years, real estate speculators looking to make a quick gain also snapped up preconstruction condos in Chicago, Miami and San Diego. With prices rising by more than 20 percent a year, short-term buyers figured that by the time the condos were ready to occupy, they could sell them without ever moving in, clearing thousands of dollars in profits.
But as more speculators look to cash out in recently hot condo markets around the country, some economists say they could put even more downward pressure on prices in those buildings where for-sale listings are swelling. In Miami, at the Jade Residences at Brickell Bay, more than 20 percent of the building's 352 units are on the market. In San Diego, about a third of the 96 units in the Alicante, a condominium that opened last fall, are listed for sale and sellers are already starting to cut asking prices.
In Donald Trump's luxury condos at 120 Riverside Boulevard in Manhattan, owners of more than one-fifth of the building's 250 units are currently marketing their apartments. With so much inventory, said Ilan Bracha, a broker with Prudential Douglas Elliman in New York, "the buyers are coming in, checking the best views and then they negotiate. This is the reality."
While investors made up only 9.5 percent of residential mortgages nationally in the 10 months through October, according to First American Corporation's LoanPerformance, a San Francisco mortgage data firm, the numbers are much higher in places like San Diego, where investors represented 13.5 percent of residential mortgages, and Miami, where they were 16 percent.
Hans Nordby, research strategist at Property and Portfolio Research in Boston, said those numbers underreport the real level of speculation in those markets because many buyers disguise their intentions when they get their mortgages. As those speculators flood the market, he said, they will put pressure on other sellers to cut prices, too. "A rising or sinking tide affects all boats," Mr. Nordby said.
Still, a sell-off in speculative condos is unlikely to start a widespread housing crash, because condos were more overbuilt than single-family homes during the recent boom, said Joseph Gyourko, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. But weakness in the condo market, he said, "is a consistent indicator that the great boom has really ended."
For those buyers who had dreamed of quick riches, the change in the market has come as a sobering lesson. A little over a year ago, Shabana Qureshi, a 26-year-old engineer, put deposits down on two condos in Arlington. "My friends were making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of properties," Ms. Qureshi said. "I just thought I'll take this risk now and not think about it too much, and once the time comes I can either sell it or use it depending on my needs."
She moved into a one-bedroom condo at Clarendon 1021 with hardwood floors, granite kitchen countertops and a heated pool on the roof. But having taken a pay cut with a new job, she can no longer afford the mortgage and maintenance fees, which are almost $3,000 a month.
Last week, she put the condo, for which she paid $438,000, on the market for $470,000 and plans to move into the other condo she bought in Arlington. She is selling the Clarendon condo herself to save on the real estate commission. But even if she gets her asking price, she figures she will break even after closing costs.
Having scrimped to buy at what she said she believed was the peak of the market, Ms. Qureshi said she regretted her investments. If she had to do it all over again, she said she would have spent more money on travel and a new car. "I would have been more carefree and invested once I had a family," she said.
In the last few years, speculators were drawn to real estate because of double-digit appreciation. Nationally, median condo prices increased by nearly 13 percent, to $218,200, in 2005, according to the National Association of Realtors. But earlier this month, the group, which is based in Washington, forecast a slowdown in the rate of appreciation, saying that median home prices for all housing types — single family, townhouses, condominiums and co-ops — would rise by only 5 percent this year.
Already, the rate of appreciation in some of the hottest markets for speculators has slowed. In San Diego, the median home price (the exact middle of all prices) rose at an annual rate of just 2.5 percent in January, compared with 20 percent a year earlier, according to DataQuick Information Systems, a research firm.
Last week, in a sign of a broader slowdown in the housing market, Toll Brothers, the luxury home builder, said orders for new homes fell by nearly 30 percent in the three months ended Jan. 31. On Monday, KB Homes also said that orders were down significantly and that more buyers were canceling contracts.
At the same time, developers are still building condos in Miami, New York and Chicago, so speculators trying to sell will also have to compete with new units coming on the market.
The slowdown will affect all sellers, of course, but speculators may be more acutely affected if they were expecting speedy profits or are paying mortgage and maintenance costs on empty apartments. In some cases, even if they rent them out, the rents will not cover their costs.
This is not the first time that condo markets have been influenced by investors. In the late 1980's, developers converted thousands of condo units in the Northeast and many of them were bought by speculators, said Karl E. Case, an economist at Wellesley College. Many of those investors, he said, ended up losing money when they sold in the early 1990's. "It was ugly," he said.
More experienced investors take a philosophical view of what they see as inevitable setbacks. R. Dawn Stahl, a lawyer in San Diego who bought two apartments in the Alicante, is now trying to sell both of them.
But in a city where there are about 6,200 condos for sale, up from about 3,100 this time last year, according to the San Diego Association of Realtors, it has been difficult to lure buyers. Ms. Stahl has yet to receive any offers, so she has already lowered her asking price on one of the listings from $650,000 to $599,000.
She paid $499,000 for that two-bedroom apartment and said she believed she would make a small profit after paying commissions and capital gains taxes. But if she cannot sell within a few months, she will rent the apartments out instead.
"I knew that was a risk that I took," Ms. Stahl said.
But a reason that a speculative sell-off is not likely to lead to a bursting bubble is that unlike stocks, where investors can panic and sell large volumes in a matter of hours, owners of real estate will only slash prices so far. "People resist and don't sell," said Mr. Case. "It tends to stabilize prices."
A year and a half ago, Erez Abkzer, who owns a window treatment business in New York, signed a contract for a one-bedroom condo facing the river in 120 Riverside for $850,000. "The market was booming and I decided to jump on that wagon," he said.
He closed on the apartment last month and immediately listed it for $1.1 million. He said he would rent the apartment rather than lower his price. "Otherwise it would all be in vain," Mr. Abkzer said. "I won't make money on it."
Some brokers say that speculators have unrealistic profit expectations. "I think a lot of sellers are saying I should make X percent," said Eve Thompson, an agent with Long & Foster in Fairfax, Va. "But your chances of being able to do that are as good as going to Oracle and telling them you want more for your stock."
In Miami, where there appears to be a large overhang of investor properties, sellers are still making profits, said Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors. But with the inventory of available condos having jumped from about 5,400 listings at the end of December 2004 to about 12,750 now, he said, asking prices have come down in the last three or four months. Mr. Shuffield said he was confident that there would eventually be takers for most of those condos because of the influx of buyers from Latin America and Europe as well as baby boomers from the Northeast.
But some real estate watchers say there is evidence that demand is starting to slacken in Miami. According to Michael Y. Cannon, managing director of Integra Realty Resources-South Florida, a market analyst, the volume of sales of existing condos declined by 9.6 percent in South Florida between 2004 and 2005.
For now, the bumper crop of properties is a boon to buyers. In San Diego, Tom Hinks, a 21-year-old who is looking to buy a condo downtown, has realized he can take his time.
His approach might scare some sellers. Since Mr. Hinks started looking four months ago, he has viewed 30 condos. "I've actually liked quite a few of them," he said. "But every day it seems like the prices are starting to trim down so I don't want to pay too much."
CFK - This has been the second largest position in my portfolio (13%). At this point I have almost a double and recently shaved 20% off my position since I exercised some options on LGND. CFK doesn't seem to garner the same multiple as larger services company like Halliburton, even though it has shown growth. Might be just lack of visibility. A couple more quarters like this and I'm sure there will be plenty of visibility.
CFK - I'm approaching a double on this one with earnings coming up at the end of the week. Thanks to the board. I've sold about 20% of my original position so far. Looking forward to posting to the board some research, as I may have some more time on my hands in the next few months with a potential layoff in the wings.
Answer to my own option mkt question.
Googled options selling below intrinsic value and found my answer. I was looking to sell some LGND Jan 10 calls, however the bids were about 15% below intrinsic value. Basically I just called up my broker and exercised my options early and than sold my stock i exercised. I actually kept some stock since I think this is a good special situation. I reported this stock several months back in the Value Microcaps Zipcode Changer.
Options Mkt question
What do you do when a market maker won't give you at least intrinsic value on your option position that is expiring. I'm in the LGND Jan 10 calls. I don't have the cash to buy the underlying stock because I don't want to sell out of some existing positions. Any ideas? I've place several orders at just intrinsic value, but the bid is still about 20% below that. I'm not taking that large of a haircut.
LGND.PK - They have caught up on their SEC filings. Now the next target is relisting on the NASDAQ. They indicated they would file for relisting soon after completing their financials.
AVSO - I agree w/ the large volume it makes me wonder. I might have sold all of it if volume was much lighter. However 8x's the avg 100 day volume means some accumulation. I'll hold the rest to see what pans out since I made almost 60% on the first half.
AVSO - Anybody notice the runup to $1.68? Took half off the table at this price. This is coming on volume as well.
O&G companies are increasing their capex budgets. Should be good news for O&G service companies like CFK. Optically they are being viewed as gouging consumers. One way to lessen the optic effect of excess profits is to spend some of the windfall.
Chevron Plans to Boost
Capital Spending by 35%
A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP
December 8, 2005 11:19 a.m.
Chevron Corp. set a $14.8 billion capital-spending and exploration budget for next year, a 35% increase over its planned $11 billion spending for this year.
The San Ramon, California, oil giant said the increase reflects the shift into the construction phase for many company projects. It earmarked $4.9 billion for spending in the U.S., up from $3.8 billion in 2005.
The sharp boost in capital spending comes as rising oil prices has fueled criticism of oil companies over their record profits. One proposal in the Senate would tax oil profits above a certain level unless those profits are reinvested in exploration and production.
"There is no question that the oil companies are being pushed by Washington to spend more money," said Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit. Mr. Gheit also said the planned spending increase factors in significant inflation, as rising oil prices have led to rising costs for materials and services.
Chevron plans to spend about 75%, or $11.3 billion, of its 2006 budget for exploration, production and natural-gas projects. Part of this amount will cover a full year's spending to develop growth projects of Unocal Corp., which was acquired in August. About 19% of the budget, or about $2.8 billion, is intended for refining and marketing operations, including projects to increase gasoline production and improve Chevron's ability to produce products from heavy and sour crude grades.
Chevron said it would spend $700 million on a range of other projects during the year, including alternative energy programs like batteries for hybrid cars.
The company also said its board approved a program to buy back up to $5 billion in common stock over three years, following on a previous $5 billion buyback plan launched in April 2004.
Write to the Online Journal's editors at newseditors@wsj.com.
LGND.PK - The company has come to terms w/ hedgefund and will give them 3 board seats by expanding the board from 8 to 11.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051205/20051205005404.html?.v=1
In their earnings update they also stated they will file 1Q, 2Q, & 3Q 2005 statements in early December. I'm waiting for restatements.
The CEO also said they will be refiling for NASDAQ listing following that date. This should put them back in play with more funds as some funds can't trade pink sheets.
David E. Robinson, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ligand Pharmaceuticals said. "We expect to complete the rest of the financial reporting normalization process by filing our first, second and third quarter Form 10-Qs by early December as well as to submit our application for relisting of our common stock on the NASDAQ National Market after all required filings are made with the SEC."
LGND.PK - Good things come for those who wait.
I tried looking for the royalties in the filings, but didn't find it yet. Of course they've now got a PR saving me any more work.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051202/20051202005310.html?.v=1
Check it out. This drug could provide royalties which substantially add to their revenues.
They're current drug Avinza is best in class in the pain mgmt field. However the company's sales execution is horrible and sales were $30mm for 9/30/05, annualizing to $120mm. The market is a $5bb+ market. Oxycontin is a much larger in sales $1.5bb+. Avinza's drug has been tested to have fewer side effects and similar pain relief. So my feeling is that mgmt has botched the marketing. ENDP which is a company I first invested in at 7 and added at 20, makes generic Oxycontin and was able to get $50mm in sales their 1st qtr of marketing a generic Oxycontin.
With the pressure of a activist shareholder, it looks like the company has got a kick in the pants to get things right. Let's hope that happens.
Just an update on LGND.PK
http://yahoo.reuters.com/financeQuoteCompanyNewsArticle.jhtml?duid=mtfh45036_2005-11-30_16-18-25_l30...
The article states LGND would be due a royalty on further development of one of their drugs by Glaxo currently in Phase II. Filing for regulatory approval end of 2006 or in 2007. Glaxo has high hopes for this one. I'll have to delve into the filings to see how much it is. I vaguely remember some high single digit/low double digit royalties for their drugs.
VPHM - Sorry offering price not determined.
Now time to read what the offering says...
http://smartmoney.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?FilingID=4042095&Type=HTML
I was a little nervous that it was going lower.
Ligand Pharmaceuticals
The stock has moved up to $10.4 after recent submissions that they will be filing soon. Excerpt from their 8-K...
"The company intends to complete its work on the third quarter financial statements, including support work to the BDO review, so that a filing can be made in early December 2005. Upon filing of its third quarter Form 10-Q, the company expects to be current in its SEC filings, thus enabling the company to submit its application for relisting of its common stock on the NASDAQ National Market."
In addition their is an activist working to "enhance shareholder value" on this company, as detailed in previous posts.
CXTI - Tongue in cheek
Gotta love my effect on the mkt. As soon as I open my mouth thinking there will be something positive around the corner, the market decides to put my comments through a wood chipper. Stock went from 2.15 to 1.75 in the span of an hour after my comment.
CXTI - Reporting date?
Earnings should be around the corner. I took a gamble during the decline that there would be a pop given the previous two earnings reports. It's taking a nice run up to 2.15 today. I bought some around 1.2 and passing thoughts of doubling up at .8 were considered. Easy come, easy go.
Anyone know the reporting date? If numbers are near or exceed last quarter, I expect another run up.
I'm waiting for the condo market to fall...
Just an anectdotal story of the NY condo market. I personally live in NYC and currently rent. I missed the bus numerous times because my bids were "too low" for places. I probably could have bought some multi-family buildings and turned them to condo and made a killing, but I was not aggressive enough in my bidding. Timing reasons had me hold off for various reasons over the last three years, but now I'm holding out because it's just purely too expensive. I see buildings being gutted all around me and also large condo developments going up in what used to be shady areas. Hopefully in the future I can get my slice of Manhattan living at a much reduce rate than what it is currently priced in at.
The numbers may be off slightly but one of my uncles bought a studio for personal use in a area of Manhattan called Battery Park City in the late 80's condo peak, I believe it was 1989 and he paid approx. $250k for a studio that also had maintenance of over $1k a month. When the market plummeted in the early '90s he said he could have sold it at $150k for a substantial loss. He held on and eventually sold in 2000 for slightly above break even. Now that condo could be sold for over $500k. That's a 400 sq ft. studio apt. He also got in the development business and gutted an entire building and sold of the condo's individually. He sold the last apt, a penthouse unit a little over a year and a half ago for slightly over $2.25mm and thought he made a killing. It was a white box unit aka four walls w/ plumbing. Someone is now trying to sell the place for $3.5mm after making renovations.
With the average 2BR priced at over $1mm in Manhattan, it looks like I'll be on the sidelines. If a similar scenario unfolds like in the early '90s maybe I can buy into the city I love for a bargain price of $600k <said w/ sarcasm>. Just wanted to vent.
Thanks.
CHAR - Getting CHARred to a crisp today... Might still hold on after investing after the fall to the 5's. Would invest more, but already margined enough.
LGND.PK - Special Situation
Might not be a real zip code changer, but didn't belong in the VMC board either. Thought I'd provide some info on something I've put my money in considering the wealth of information I've received from this board. I originally bought around 7.8 before they delisted. Hurdle to relist is the filing of financials, which has a deadline of early Nov. Might be worth a quick trade just on that, however the company does have viable drugs.
Company response to the shareholder dissent letter...
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/886163/000088616305000033/0000886163-05-000033.txt
Shareholder dissent letters...
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/886163/000089914005000884/l2992329d.txt
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/886163/000089914005000895/t3006060c.txt
From the NYT...
October 4, 2005
Slowing Is Seen in Housing Prices in Hot Markets
By DAVID LEONHARDT and MOTOKO RICH
A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York.
More sellers are putting their homes on the market, houses are selling less quickly and prices are no longer increasing as rapidly as they were in the spring, according to local data and interviews with brokers.
In Manhattan, the average sales price fell almost 13 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter, according to a widely followed report to be released today by Miller Samuel, an appraisal firm, and Prudential Douglas Elliman, a real estate firm. The amount of time it took to sell a home was also up 30.4 percent over the same period.
In another sign that the housing market might have reached a peak, executives at big home builders have sold almost $1 billion worth of company stock this year. [Page C1.]
Outside Washington, in Fairfax County, Va., the number of homes on the market in August rose nearly 50 percent from August 2004. In the Boston suburb of Brookline, Mass., where many three-bedroom houses cost $1 million or more, the inventory of homes for sale has increased in just the last few weeks, said Chobee Hoy, a broker there.
For-sale listings have also swelled throughout California, according to the California Association of Realtors. In the San Francisco Bay area, they have increased 16 percent in the last year, Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage said.
"We are seeing a market in transition," Leslie Appleton-Young, the association's chief economist, said.
Brokers said that some houses seemed to be on the market longer because sellers priced them too high, assuming that their value was still rising sharply. In other cases, people who otherwise would have waited a year or two to sell their homes - like empty nesters ready to move into smaller quarters - had listed them now out of fear that prices would soon fall.
The question remains whether all of this represents a momentary cooling off of some overheated housing markets, or it presages a more pronounced downturn that would end a decade-long boom.
Some economists and commentators have for years predicted the bursting of a real estate bubble, and previous slowdowns have turned out to be relatively brief pauses before prices started accelerating again.
But with mortgage rates now rising, the cost of gasoline hovering at or near $3 a gallon and house prices in some areas out of reach for many families, brokers and analysts said they thought that this slowdown could be the real thing.
For now, the change remains a far cry from the bursting bubble that some have predicted.
In Massachusetts, for example, the median house price remained flat from July to August, and the median condominium price fell only slightly, according to the Realtors' association there. At the start of the year, prices had been rising at an annual rate of more than 15 percent.
If anything, some brokers said, the recent slowdown meant a return to a healthier, more sustainable market.
"What we had was abnormal," said Dottie Herman, chief executive of Prudential Douglas Elliman. "People get used to abnormal times and then when they're normal, they think there's something wrong."
Alexander Shakhov, 47, listed his two-bedroom house in Frederick, Md., an outer suburb of Washington, for $529,000 in July, and it remained unsold for the rest of the summer. A
month ago, he reduced the price to $499,000 at the suggestion of a broker. A week ago, Mr. Shakhov accepted an offer at the lower price.
The market "is not as hot as the last two years," Mr. Shakhov, a scientist at a biotechnology company, said, "but I'm pretty happy."
He bought the house three years ago for $230,000. He now lives in Cleveland, where he has bought a home that is nearly twice as large as his Frederick house for less money.
The cooling off has forced both sellers and real estate agents to begin changing their attitudes about residential property, many said.
Houses that are priced too high are sometimes on the market for weeks or months now, rather than fetching even more money than their owners had imagined they could get.
In Manhattan, the average sales price of co-op and condominium apartments fell 12.7 percent, to $1.15 million, in the three months that ended on Sept. 30 compared with the second quarter, according to the Prudential Douglas Elliman report. The median sales price - which means half of homes sold for more and half for less - fell 3.2 percent, to $750,000.
Still, the average sales price was 10 percent higher this summer than it was a year earlier, according to the study.
Nationally, housing prices rose at the fastest rates since 1979 in the 12 months through August, the National Association of Realtors said last week.
But the changes that real estate agents have seen in recent weeks - increased inventories and longer sales times - have often preceded market slowdowns in the past.
One reason properties are remaining on the market longer is that sellers still expect to reap double-digit price appreciation each year.
"What will slow this market down, and has slowed certain segments of the market down, is overpricing," said Pamela Liebman, chief executive of the Corcoran Group, a large real estate firm in New York. "Back in the spring, there was such a frenzy that very pedestrian product was drawing multiple bids."
Some of today's sellers appear to be pricing their homes as if the frenzy were continuing.
"Their neighbors sold their house when the market was red-hot, and everybody thinks their house is better than their neighbor's house," said Maggie Tomkiewicz, the president of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors and a broker in South Dartmouth. "But when the neighbor sold, there may not have been five other houses on the market" in the area.
The slowdown has also jolted the thousands of people who have become licensed brokers in the last few years. Until now, many of them knew only galloping price appreciation.
"I've gotten these calls from newer agents saying: 'I've had this property on the market for 60 to 90 days. What do I do?'" related Buzz Mackintosh, an owner of Mackintosh Realtors in Frederick, who has been selling houses for two decades. "And I say, 'It's called, 'Reduce your price.' "
Indications of a slowdown have appeared before. Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, said the last time that average and median sales prices dropped below those the previous quarter at the same time that inventories and sales duration rose in Manhattan was in the fourth quarter of 2002. But by the end of 2003, the market had come back.
An important difference now, though, is that mortgage rates are creeping up, whereas previous comebacks have been fueled by ever-lower rates.
On five-year adjustable-rate mortgages - a popular loan with a fixed interest rate for the first five years - the initial rate has risen to 5.59 percent on average, from 5.14 percent in June, according to BankRate.com.
What is more, some mortgage lenders have started to tighten credit standards, making it harder for buyers to get loans.
"Low interest rates and easy credit standards are just about over," said Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ron Nixon, in New York, and Matt Richtel, in San Francisco, contributed reporting for this article.
FPP - What the heck did the Navellier report say? That's quite some move. I've unloaded and will try to get back in once I can rationalize the increase.