when will it all end??
I just read a report this morning claiming that the housing market will not “rebound” for a number of months. Nationally, we have 9.9 months of inventory, a 7.7% decline in median home prices, and 18% of all homes for sale right now have negative equity. Beyond this, lenders are dragging their feet to approve short sales and tightening lending standards daily, making it even more difficult to qualify for a loan to those who DO want to buy.
So what does a rebound look like from such dismal statistics anyway? I don’t foresee any sort of rebound in the sense that the ball keeps bouncing, by any means. We’ve got to undo the damage done by the irrational exuberance of investors and homeowners consumed with greed. Just as in the stock market where speculative buying is perhaps the most obvious, the psychology of buying and selling needs to shift before we’ll ever see a marked improvement in price stability. I believe what we’re going through now is the natural result of a market driven by historically low interest rates, solid economics, and a “can’t lose” philosophy towards owning a home.
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