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One hour outside of Washington DC, in the picturesque small city of Martinsburg, West Virginia, some homes for sale are attracting bidding wars—again.
“Prices are so low, we’re starting to see that," says Marc Savitt, a realtor there for a quarter of a century. “In our area, you’re at the bottom.”
Savitt, who’s also president of the National Association Of Mortgage Brokers, might be accused of being overly optimistic. But he is hardly alone in sensing a long-awaited bottom in the real estate market.
For most at this point, it’s less a matter of bold confidence that cautious optimism, but data are emerging to make a reasonable case.
Three categories of home sales—new, existing and pending – all posted surprise gains in February, along with housing starts are posted surprise gains in February.
“There are encouraging signs that we're near a bottom,” says Nomura Securities Chief Economist David Resler, who is among those who have been calling for a bottom in the late first half of 2009. “The signs of improvement we've been seeing have to be recurrent. One to two months isn’t enough to establish it; it needs to be a stretch.”
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