For those who are looking for just one chart with which to summarize the US housing market, here it is courtesy of the NAR, which earlier today reported [3] July existing home sales, which despite beating expectations, were still 4.3% below the 5.38 million annualized homes sold a year ago.
The chart shows that while the housing market for the low-end continues to collapse (the 12.9% drop was "only" -12% three months ago [4]), and the mid-range is virtually frozen, all the upside activity, activity which pushes the median price ever higher ( in July it was $222,900, 4.9% percent above July 2013 and the 29th consecutive month of year-over-year price gains), was in the ultra-luxury segment, or houses which cost over $1 million as the "1%", both foreign and domestic, continues to convert their pieces of fiat paper into hard real-estate assets
[5]
Source: NAR [6] [6]
