Building Industry Expecting Home Sales To Fall To 2001 Level?

The sky is falling! What more can the media come up with? Can they be any more negative? The headlines in our business section about how the building industry is losing profits right now. Profits compared to what and when? When the home prices were being inflated? Let's get real! 

The forecast from Freddie Mac was also gloom stating: "U.S. Home sales in 2007 will drop to their lowest level since the start of the five year housing boom that began in 2001 as mortgage rates and foreclosures increase." 

Yes, it is slow but people are still buying and sellers are still selling. And slow compared to what?  Some areas are hit harder than others. It is all relative. But this gloom and doom that the media keeps portraying makes the buyers scared to buy. They are worried that what they buy today will be worth less tomorrow. No where in the media print or TV news have they said; This is Real Estate, it goes up and it goes down. Real Estate is a long term investment. No, you are not going to be a flipper today in this market but you should never have depended on flipping to make a living anyways! 

And if you knew the ARM loan you got was going to go up as the interest rate does, why did you buy the house knowing you could not make the payments? We have wanna be investors who bought new construction trying to flip it before closing and then when the market changed and they had to close, they just walked away from the property without ever even making their first mortgage payment. That is part of the problem with so many foreclosures here in Florida. Real Estate investing never guaranteed anyone a profit in a short time frame. It is not about jumping in and jumping out.

People still need to move and buy homes. So as long as we focus on the positive we will make it through this too.  So I just don't watch the news anymore. I do need to read the real estate section and business section of the paper so I know how I will respond to our clients when they reference the media.