According to a Wall Street Journal article, The Shifting Calculus of Buying a Home, home prices are falling in many cities all across the nation. One other thing you might notice is that energy economy cities such as Dallas and Houston are not on the list. Austin Texas is also not on the list and is not an energy economy but heavily laden with technology concerns of all types. All three cities are growing very rapidly. Still I wonder; is it really that bad on the coasts? I doubt it - people tend to get pessimistic when they are not as productive and their business slows, regardless of the fact that they are exiting an extraordinarily hot market.
It seems to me a simple loss of perspective. I think some Realtors get used to gravy training and forget how to wear out shoe leather gutting it out day by day. Gravy training kills Realtors and all it takes for most Realtors is for them to have one really huge year and the gravy training starts and their business flounders. The simply expect things to come to them after a while. Top Realtors know the secret and that is to never let up despite economic prosperity.
In Houston, Realtors these days lament that there is very little "product" available for buyers to choose from. Are people in Houston hunkering down expecting some serious appreciation? Or is there simply limited options for homeowners to move into should they sell and hence the lack of options? Hard to tell but I think it is both plus a booming economy and neither because it might be bad info from Realtors coming off some very good times. Engineering, Medical, Services and of course Energy are dominating and sucking in large numbers of employees - if you have a heart beat you have no excuse not to have job in Houston and probably Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin for that matter. This means thousands of transactions so I don't think I really buy into the notion that there is a lack of product. Also I know that many homes are available for sale for the right price but are not necessarily on the market.
All of this local expansion requires room for the companies themselves and the commercial market is tightening rapidly. It is highly likely going to be 2.3 million square feet of office space between Downtown and the west side of Houston during the next 18 months with 1.2 million square feet already out of the ground. That's small potatoes in a city with 185 million square feet total but it does not include many other areas of town including north and southwest. For all of the talk in the media about a lackluster economy and a softening real estate market, I am amazed by the fact that the Dow hit 12,000 today, we are at record low unemployment, wages are up, and and and and..... Folks I am not drinking the punch that the media is serving up for some reason. Even if there is a slow down, it sure is mild. I also just dumped the slow real estate market cool aid down the drain but oil still is north of $50/barrel - unthinkable two years ago. Is $20/barrel oil unthinkable now? I wonder.....
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