Last week I read that 13% of the single family homes in the U.S. are sitting vacant.
It made me wonder where all those people could have gone. Are they doubling up - with 2 or 3 families to a house? Are they living in Mom's basement? Are they driving around in a mini-bus, living in camp grounds? Are they on the streets?
Part of it no doubt comes from over-building of new construction, but still... 13% seems like a lot. And according to the law of supply and demand, that would indicate that prices still have a way to fall.
That was last week...
TODAY I read that we are heading into a significant housing shortage that will drive up prices. This was according to a representative of Metrostudy - a real estate data provider.
So which is the truth?
Are there too many vacant homes, or are we going into a shortage situation?
Next we have all the news from Washington... Proposed regulations that make everyone feel like the sky is falling.
But we don't know which regulations will be passed. And when they're passed, we don't know which ones the banks will actually obey.
So what can you tell your buyers and sellers?
That you just don't know. If sellers really need to sell, you'll help them. If buyers want a home of their own and they can comfortably afford the payments, they should buy.
Meanwhile, I think maybe it would be a good idea to just ignore the news reports. They're all conflicting, so if we react to any of them, we might be jumping the wrong direction.
Let's just keep working...
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