I attended the 17th Annual Cardinal Bank, George Mason University, Greater Washington Economic Conference January 13, 2009. The speakers were:
- Steven Pearlstein, Columnist, The Washington Post
- John McClain, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Center for Regional Analysis, School of Public Policy, George Mason University
- Stephen Fuller, PhD, Dwight Schar Faculty Chair, Center for Regional Analysis, School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Chief Economist, Cardinal Bank
Steven Pearlstein presented first. Here are his predictions on the U.S. economy:
- 2009 will be worse than 2008
- 2009 will be the worst year in 80 years
- commercial real estate will be a big reason
- foreclosures will peak
- consumer debt will increase
- record number of defaults
Mr. Pearlstein feels we had not only a housing bubble, but really a bubble economy. This bubble economy was neither real nor sustainable. Right now government spending is keeping our economy going. He went on to say our local Northern Virginia economy is doing better than most. Our local economy is not immune but is shrinking, the federal government does provide some cushion to our economy, but their long term spending will decrease and the effects will come.
John McClain focused more on the housing market in Northern Virginia. According to Mr. McClain here is where we are:
- there currently is a 6 to 8 month supply of homes, the normal supply of homes is 4.5 months
- Prince William has more like a 16 month supply of homes
- the average number of home sales is 86,800 units per year, in 2008 there was only 57,000 home sales
- long term average new home starts per year is 18,000 and in 2008 there was only 6,400 new home starts
- the average number of building permits per year is 3,300, and in 2008 there were only 1400 building permits.
- Home prices fell an average of 19% from calendar year 2007 to 2008
- 32 year average appreciation is 6.4%
The average home price was $197,000 in 1999, $468,000 in 2007 and $394,000 in 2008. In August of 2007 there was a 66% new home kick out rate, in December 2007 the rate was 44% and December of 2008 the rate was 24%, the kick out rate is the number of people that walk away from new home contacts. The average annual rate is 10-15%.
John's predication was - look to see listing to sale ratio decrease; decrease in building permits as we work through our inventory. Prices close to DC will remain stable and increased sales in outer parts. He also predicted easing foreclosure rates. This was bit confusing as he also mentioned the reset of ALT A loans in mid 2009 that would accelerate through 2011.
Stephen Fuller, PhD also had his own statistics to present:
- Unemployment is at 16 year high. We are losing 500,000 jobs per month.
- He also mentioned a $185 billion tax implication with decreased gas prices and a Federal Spending Bubble.
- He said to look at housing starts as an indication the economy is getting better.
- The Federal Government will decrease spending this year and he thinks we are in our 13th month of recession.
- In our local area we are net 45K new jobs and the jobs we grew are higher paying jobs than those we lost.
- The US unemployment rate is 4.4% but the local unemployment rate is much better at 2.9%. Northern Virginia gets double the federal dollars as Maryland and we get 2 jobs to 1 in Maryland, so he feels Northern Virginia will come out of the recession sooner. In cities with the 15 largest job markets we have the lowest unemployment rate.
Our economy had overconsumption that showed up in the housing market. The current inventory of housing is at 8.5 month supply, the supply is never 0 and normal is 4.5 months. When the supply went down to 2 months we had double digit price increases. The rate of appreciation far outpaced the affordability.
Looking forward the best years in the next business cycle will be in 2012 and 2013. The Commercial Real Estate market will be hard hit through 2011.
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