The economy is on everyone’s mind and how could it not be? We are in a time when gas prices are at an all time high, groceries are darn near becoming a luxury, and SUV’s can’t be given away by car dealers. Real estate is feeling the pinch, too. It only makes sense. The economy is a large domino design- push one domino down and everything goes with it.
I want a house, though. So far my adult life has been one apartment after another and now is the time, I said to myself, it’s time to make the grownup move into a house of my own. Besides, all I hear on the nightly news is that this is a buyer’s market. Being the potential buyer, I decide, that now is the time to make my grownup move.
Curious about real estate news, I start to do my research.
According to the Housing Predictor, housing prices are falling faster than they ever have since the Great Depression in the 1930’s “averaging a loss in the last 12 months of 13.2%, which is worse than the 10.5% drop of 1932, the lowest point of the Depression.” Furthermore, this is being called the real estate crisis and “now ranks as the worst deflationary cycle in U.S. real estate history.”
Not every city and state are feeling this pinch, and Housing Predictor lists the top twenty-five housing markets in the country, as of June 2008. Amarillo, Texas is number twenty-five, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is twenty-four, and speeding to the top is Biloxi, Mississippi, is number two while Poughkeepsie, New York is number one.
On the other side of this is the top twenty-five worst housing markets: number twenty-five is Cleveland, Ohio, and Grand Rapids, Michigan is twenty-four. Miami, Florida is the second worst in the United States, and Las Vegas, Nevada is the first.
These numbers show us that the best and worst are scattered all over the country. Perhaps the most frightening aspect to all of this is that there is little if anything we consumers can do, except ride out this cause and effect downward spiral. As more and more homes go into foreclosure it has become more difficult to get a mortgage. As fuel and building materials rise, there are fewer homes being built.
The economy is a pendulum, and real estate is along for the back and forth swinging ride. It is bad now, but things will come back to good. One day.
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