Take a look at this piece of reporting

Allow me to break it down further, to the bare essentials of what happened during the fourth quarter of 2009.

1. Sales of existing homes were up 27.2% during the last three months of 2009.

2. Single-family prices fell 4% – the smallest price decline in more than two years.

3. Garry Benson (that’s me) asserted in a Q4 Crain’s article that “the market has stopped going down.” One commenter asked me if I was insane. I replied with a post entitled: Garry Benson, Are You Insane?

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but during the time of my quote and article (Q4), things WERE indeed getting a little better, or at least slowly correcting, reversing course – no insanity necessary.

Please don’t interpret this as gloating. My comment had been based on a gut feeling after watching 12 mil worth of real estate sell in one day.

Today I stand on much more solid ground when I suggest that maybe the market has stopped going down. That’s good news for all of us – we can really build a case for rational optimism for 2010.

Go ahead and check out the original NAR report, and let me know how you choose to interpret the new data. We at Garrison Partners would love to hear your take on it, insane or otherwise.

GB

…in order to overcome the market-rate anxiety of participating in the social experiment,” says Garry Benson, president of Chicago-based residential marketing firm Garrison Partners, which has worked on two other mixed-income projects near Cabrini-Green. “If you start off having to offer below-market value, when the market drops, you can’t drop your prices below your costs.

Last time I was in Crain’s, readers posted some rather spirited comments in reply. Here’s an example:

Garry Benson, are you insane?

I love questions like that. Which is why I responded with a blog post on December 7th. You can scroll down one entry, it’s my mini-manifesto on why things might, MIGHT, be turning around.

To read full Crain’s article on Cabrini Green bailout (if you’re in Chicago real estate, you probably should) click here.

Garry