By Melissa Wirkus
The California Realtor Expo of 2006 just occurred, with some surprising
outlooks on today’s current
housing market.
Amidst all of the doom and gloom surrounding the industry, most Realtors
at the conference were nothing but optimistic.
Not only were most incredibly optimistic about the current state, considering
recent discouraging figures that have been coming in, but they also
saw a bright outlook for housing in the very near future. Translation:
We may have seen the worst of the housing market’s downturn.
An October 23, 2006 article by Don Jergler of the Presstelegram.com,
“Realty Bites: Housing market’s looking positive,”
discusses what Realtors see for the future of this very crucial market.
“About 12,000 Realtors gathered in Long Beach for three days last
week to hear the fate of the market at the California Realtor Expo 2006
at the convention center. A housing report delivered at the conference
on Wednesday forecast the median home price to fall slightly for the
first time in 10 years.”
Although the report says that median home prices are expected to fall
even more than they already have, the Realtors still had a positive
response.
Even the experts who gather all of the discouraging data were extremely
optimistic.
“The experts offered mostly positive outlooks for the 2007 economy
and housing market
for California, despite the expected drop in the median home price and
a foreclosure report issued on Wednesday that showed the number of foreclosure
notices sent to Californians rose to double what it was last year.”
New data that was just released suggests that the impending foreclosures
and mortgage defaults that are expected to occur will probably not hurt
the economy that much at all. It will be more painful for the individual
borrowers who got into mortgages they really couldn’t afford.
Although people have more options now than ever before to help them
out of defaults and foreclosures.
“Chris Cagan, director of research and analytics for First American
Real Estate Solutions, said foreclosures will have some effect on the
market, but it won't be anything like the gloom and doom scenario of
a bursting real
estate bubble. ‘Reset will affect the market, but not break
it,’ he said.”
The experts also agreed that the slowing
housing sales we are seeing today is just a way of the market “correcting
itself” from the grandiose boom of the past five years.
“Sales dropped 23 percent in 2006, and are expected to fall another
7 percent in 2007, according to California Association of Realtors statistics.”
Many people have been worried that the downturn we are experiencing
right now will be reminiscent of the one that occurred in the 1990s,
but experts at the conference pointed out several key differences.
“Then: In the 1990s the country was in the midst of an economic
recession that cost California alone 200,000 well-paying aerospace jobs.
Now: The economy today is expanding.”
“Then: In the early 1990s mortgage
rates were high. Now: In 2006 rates are reasonable at about 6.5
percent.”