A ray of hope for housing?
March 24th, 2008, 4:38 pm · 1 Comment · posted by mistywilliams
I’ve noticed a recent trend in my conversations with builders and real estate agents these days. They say more potential buyers are calling up and stopping by model homes. More contracts for homes are being signed as people take advantage of discounts on foreclosure properties and other deals.
Of course, these agents and builders are cautiously optimistic and aren’t declaring that the tide has turned. Sales usually start to jog upward in the springtime when nice weather spurs potential buyers to get off their couches.
Agents also say the Valley still has huge hurdles to leap over. A massive oversupply of homes is on the market. Foreclosures are pulling down home values in neighborhoods across the Valley. Builders are facing bankruptcy. And millions of Americans are still feeling a financial crunch from the mortgage crisis fallout.
So is the bottom of the housing market’s dramatic free fall finally approaching? Maybe it’s too soon to even ask the question.
But one of the local builders I recently talked to may have been close to the mark when he said that things don’t seem to be improving, but they also don’t seem to be getting much worse.
In any case, I doubt anyone will dare to call it until the bottom has already come and gone.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:58 am
The foreclosures are a very common phenomenon not just in the US and these are necessarily the consequences of the economic decline. The mortgages constitute the biggest problem as the increasing number of unemployment people makes impossible to deal with these. As a Vancouver real estate agent I`m “optimistic” as you`ve already pointed out in the article because despite of that decline people are still very eager to invest in real estate, they are very keen on to achieve their social goal, to have their own castle.