He goes on to make the point that home prices within the United States have been rising as of late, which is generating some optimism among consumers. This leads to the big question, will this optimism cause more consumers to jump back into the housing market? Or will it be overshadowed by more negative stories, such as foreclosure and unemployment?
Sunday, October 7, 2012
The Housing Market
In this article from the New York Times (link), Robert Shiller explains how optimism and pessimism among consumers can affect an entire market, in this case the housing market. He talks a lot about some survey work that he did leading up to the housing bubble bursting, and then afterwards. He interestingly notes that back in 2004, most people had a pretty good understanding of short term price trends, but not so much in the longer run, however they seemed confident in both. In fact he even states, "Notably, in 2004, when the housing boom was going gangbusters, even though the 30-year mortgage rate was above 6 percent, our survey tells us that people expected long-term home price growth of over 12 percent a year. In other words, if you borrowed 90 percent of the money to buy a $100,000 house, you would expect to make $12,000 on the house’s appreciation, and pay $5,400 interest, for a one-year profit of $6,600 — a return of 66 percent in just one year on the down payment of $10,000."
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I think it will take time to get many consumers to jump back into the housing market. The economy is just improving and people still feel the pressure that it created in 2009. There might be a few people who do take the risk and optimism to invest. I guess it all depends on how you see things and what your expectations are about on the future on the economy.
ReplyDeleteHas to be positive, if only for the fact that the attitude towards the housing market can not get much worse. Home ownership is a staple of the American dream and how many middle class americans secure their wealth. I fully expect this to once again be the case. This is good news indeed.
ReplyDeleteI think many people will be slow to jump back into the housing market because most people don't know about financial trends and base their decisions about what they hear on the news. Many people in the U.S. are struggling financially and the way that news travels fastest is word of mouth, so that will set the trend. I do however hope that the 2004 figures you quoted from the article are something that we start to head towards; just not necessarily that high end again. It would be nice to be able to graduate and start working and be able to invest in a house in a housing market that I can view as being stable and on the upswing.
ReplyDeleteWhoever started the rumor that housing prices double every 10 years, regardless of market conditions, has done an incredible amount of damage to our financial systems. The idea that virtually everybody should be tied to a mortgage, regardless of whether the market would award them one, created massive instability in a market that was often seen as the paragon of stability and the backbone of the economy. By inflating the expectations and short run production of this industry, lawmakers actually set the system up for slightly longer run failure, and a long period of stagnation before surplus housing is filled and demand for new construction rises enough to induce new creation of supply.
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