I just returned from a real estate seminar called the "Turning Point Retreat" by Brian Buffini, real estate superstar that now has the largest real estate coaching business in the world. Brian taught his "Work by Referral" system that he is most famous for but what made an impact on me was the "NO BS" information and stats he presented the first day.
NAR has all these stats as well on their new site, housingmarketfacts.com but to see them presented in one place and so clearly was refreshing and truly inspired confidence.
1. 30% of all real estate in this country is owned free and clear--No mortgage.
So this (rather large) segment of the real estate market is unaffected by all the sub-prime issues or general media negativity. 30% of all homes are at zero risk.
2. Currently only 7/10 of 1% of all homes in this country are in foreclosure.
Sure, there are more foreclosures happening now than in the past few years and yes, people are being affected which is very sad. However, these statistics are NOT overwhelming and the housing world is NOT falling apart. Watching the news lately would make you think that there are foreclosures in every neighborhood.
3. The net worth of a home owner is 46 times higher than a renter.
Incredible but true. Your home is not a stock that is bought and sold on Walll Street. We need food, shelter and clothing as our basic life necessities...a stock certificate is NOT a necessity, a shelter IS. Homeowners benefit from the power of leverage. Over 10 years a $10,000 investment in the stock market at an average 10% rate of return will yield $23,600. That SAME investment as a downpayment on a $200,000 home at a normal appreciation rate of 5% would return $110,300--Nearly 5x more than the stock market.
4. NAR expects 5 million homes will sell this year
Yes, this is down 2.1 million homes from the high of 2005 but the combination of increased consumer spending and the sub-prime problem added to this very unusual jump in real estate sales. Why unusual? Because for the past 40 years the average number of homes sold has been 4 + / - million. Consistently increasing but slowly... from 3 million homes sold in the 1970's to 3.9 million homes sold in the 1990's. Not wildly out control.
If you check out the bar graph below what is very interesting is that the average number of home sold during the decade of 1970 was 3 million, during the decade of 1980 it was slight increase to 3.3 million, during the decade of the 1990's it was 3.9 million....increasing slightly but in thirty years still staying stable. From 2000- 2007 that number wildly jumped to the high in 2005 of 7.1 million. In addition it was the first time in history that 40% of the homes were NOT owner occupied (15% is normal and considered stable)
So where are we now? We aren't going to see any more of a drop than what the market needs to get back to the consistent and healthy trend we had in the prior three decades. NEWSFLASH! The sky is not falling network news.
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