by Kirsten Grind
February 27, 2009
The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said there will likely be some recovery in the housing market in late 2009 but questioned whether it will be maintained going into 2010.
Lawrence Yun told an audience of several hundred real estate agents Friday at the Seattle King County Realtors’ Broker Summit in Bellevue that Seattle’s home prices will likely not come crashing down the way they did in higher-end, over-priced areas such as Orange County, Calif.
That’s largely because home prices in Seattle didn’t rise as high.
Yun also said President Barack Obama’s recently released $787 billion stimulus package is likely to boost the housing market.
Specifically, he said an $8,000 credit to first-time home buyers — which the National Association of Realtors lobbied for — will create an additional 900,000 new home sales across the country this year.
However, “what’s still missing is consumer confidence,” said Yun.
Yun also said there’s no correlation between the recession and falling home prices. What has affected home prices historically, and particularly after Sept. 11, 2001, and the tech bubble burst, is rising mortgage interest rates.
Mortgage interest rates are currently low, at about 5 percent.
“It’s not the job cuts, it’s the interest rates that make a big difference,” said Yun.
He also had this to say about the Seattle area: “Ten years from now, it will be one of the best performing areas nationally because there are so many smart people in the area.”
For link to article, please visit http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2009/02/23/daily57.html?
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1 comment:
I'd really like to read the transcript from the last time Larry Yun spoke to the local Realtors - wasn't he one of the many saying how our region was immune to a bubble?
Meanwhile, I was telling everyone who would listen that real estate markets across the country were taking a beating - and we would too. It's obvious to me that if people are having a hard time making ends meet, they aren't buying as much software - and the might MS has to pull back. Which leads us to our current situation where we can no longer rely on Microsoft alone to carry us through.
At any rate - I don't believe a word Lawrence Yun - or almost any other Realtor says - and I'm a broker (although choose not to be a member of the Board of Realtors.
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