Patty O'Brian Real Estate Blog

Markets go up, markets go down. Sometimes we see it coming, sometimes we don’t. It all depends on what both consumers and businesses are buying, and when. How can we tell if and when real estate will recover?

We need to ignore short-term fluctuations, like the spike in home sales last November, when buyers thought the first-time tax credit would expire. Then sales rates dropped significantly when Congress extended the tax credit and removed that original sense of urgency.

We need to pay attention to long-term forecasts instead. Consider that homeownership increases by roughly 1 million each year. There are 4 million births, 2 million deaths, 1 million new immigrants, 2 million weddings and 1 million divorces each year. All of those events spur people to buy and/or sell a home.

Crunch the numbers, and you’ll see that we can expect roughly 60 million home sales, in our nation within the next decade. Regardless of the subprime mortgage debacle, and the ensuing foreclosure crisis, real estate will remain on the rails, an unstoppable freight train barreling towards homeownership.

In looking over the statistics provided by the Columbia Board of REALTORS®
I began comparing the 1st six months of 2009 with the 1st six months of 2010. It appears the total number of new listings during that six month time period saw an increase of 1% in 2010 and a 17% increase for Sales (closed properties). Again, this spike in homes sales was probably caused by the June 30th 2010 expiration of the tax credit. Prices of homes rose 2% compared to June sales figures of last year. These numbers reflect only single family homes, in the Columbia, MO. school district.
Just my 2 cents worth. Would love to hear your words of wisdom.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 11:18 am Filed under Uncategorized and tagged comparison, home sales, homeownership, statistics, tax credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.