Who am I to have an opinion on "what is going to happen in this market"? Well, earlier this month I passed my 29th anniversary in the business. I've seen my share of ups, downs, adminstrations, stock market swings etc.
So what do I predict? And why?
Do I think we're in a bubble and going to crash? No. However I don't think this level of growth in price can/ will be substained. But I think inventory is creeping back up and prices will level to a normal pattern of growth better than the 24% average we've seen nationwide in the past 18 months.
Everyone is talking about the "moratorium ending" and all this flood of houses to market causing a crash. Well in June when I read an article (with moratorium ending) there were 2.1 million homewoners behind on their mortgages. Many more million people not paying rent and facing foreclosure. However the government kicked the can down the road, they are good at that.
Now here we are 30 days later and the latest article I find with the numbers I was looking for was this fortune article (sorry the end is behind a pay wall) (something big is about to happen) And in approximately 30 days the number of people facing foreclosure dropped from 2.1 million to 1.7 million. That means 700,000 people caught up on their mortage in the last 30 days. Hopefully in the next 60 days more and more will do the same and frankly I don't know if a single state where foreclosure can happen in less than 60 days.
And poor landlords with renters they haven't been able to evict who were not paying their rent. And no, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who were getting hundreds of dollars in unemployment a week and still not paying ANY of their rent and leaving their landlord out to dry. But I'm getting off topic, so let me get back to real estate.
So while I don't have a crystal ball and I cannot predict the future, my crystal egg and I think that we're all gonna be okay. The market won't be crashing, perhaps it will be stablizing with a few more homes coming to market. We're about double the amount of Lake Sinclair listings available that were on the market 30 days ago. I hear a lot of people say they are selling "before the market goes down" and I expect it might "settle a little", but I don't expect we'll ever get back to the prices of 2012 in my market.
In the end, we all as professionals have to just be prepared for a shift, any shift, price, inventory, loan structures etc. So while I don't predict we're in for a crash, I expect inventory to get stable, prices to back off from highs and interest rates to rise. I'll visit this post again next year and see if I was right.
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