The Housing Bubble

A report from the Washington Post. “Last summer, the Washington area real estate market was as competitive as ever, but the pace of the market has slowed considerably this year. In July, the typical home in the Washington metro area was on the market for 39 days before finding a buyer. That’s 19 days longer than last July, according to Redfin. Of the Washington area homes that sold in July, 21 percent of them were off the market in two weeks or less, down from 43 percent during the same period last year. What is causing this slowdown?”

“The number of homes for sale is on the rise. After declining nearly every month in 2016 and 2017, the Washington metro area has seen year-over-year gains in the number of homes for sale every month this year. If you stepped away from the market out of frustration over the lack of homes to buy, consider taking another look. Added inventory has created more opportunities, and buyers have a bit more leverage this year than they did in 2017.”

“Don’t expect to buy a property and be able to sell it within a year or two for a profit. The years of rapid price appreciation are now behind us, so buy the home that you want to be in for the long term.”

“Advice for sellers: Adjust your expectations and price conservatively. While conditions are still competitive, the market has slowed and your home may take longer to sell than it might have a few years ago. Pricing conservatively is the best way to drive interest and offers in your home. We’ve noticed buyers are becoming a bit more demanding and particular when it comes to inspection items and repairs.”

From Hartford Business in Connecticut. “Home builders Eric and Kevin Santini are plenty busy these days finishing a fresh batch of rental townhouses in their Deer Valley North development in Ellington. But for the first time in a decade-and-a-half, the Santinis have no new single-family houses on their building schedule — and don’t foresee building any in the near term.”

“Santini Homes, experts say, is far from the only Connecticut home builder sweating out a housing slump that, coupled with rising tariff-related costs for imported lumber and other building materials, higher municipal permit-inspection fees, plus a labor shortage among certain trade skills, has drastically cut new housing starts.”

“‘It’s the Connecticut economy,’ said Eric Santini Jr., a principal in the family’s decades-old homebuilding enterprise based in Ellington and president of the Home Builders & Remodelers Association of Central Connecticut. ‘If you don’t have strong job creation, you’re not going to have housing starts.’”

From CBS 5 in California. “Construction costs for new housing are going through the roof in San Francisco and developers are feeling the pinch. They are having trouble getting their projects finished, or even started. But a closer look shows many big developments are hitting a financial wall that is quickly becoming the new barrier to more badly-needed affordable housing.”

“According to a survey by the San Francisco Chronicle there are currently 6,750 units of housing under construction in the city. That’s about 1,000 more than a year ago, and there are another 15,000 approved for building. It’s a gold mine for the construction business, but financial quicksand for housing developers who have to cover the increases. ‘This is a normal curve,’ said Eric Tao, president of AGI Capital. ‘The construction costs started going higher and faster than values were going up – so projects get stalled.’”

The Herald Tribune in Florida. “Is the country on the verge of a residential real estate market correction? The National Association of Realtors states that home prices are at or approaching record highs in many markets. But association chief economist Lawrence Yun says concerns about whether the housing market has peaked and is headed for another significant slowdown are unfounded.”

“That view is not held universally, however. A Sarasota resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and co-director of its Center on Housing Markets and Finance co-wrote a commentary published in The Hill last month. Under the headline, ‘Booming housing market today presents serious risk for future,’ Ed Pinto and two institute colleagues wrote, ‘If the past is prologue, prices will correct when demand flattens as the economy cools or credit conditions tighten.’”

“‘When demand temporarily exceeds supply, prices rise,’ they wrote. ‘Whether or not the price increase is sustainable depends primarily on whether the strength in demand is sustainable.’”

“The article concludes with a suggestion. ‘The housing market today has too much highly leveraged demand from investors and buyers chasing available supply. As a result, real home prices have increased 25 percent since the early 2012 low, a pattern mirroring the early years of the last price boom. So long as this price boom continues, the risk of a serious correction increases. Tightening government housing agency underwriting policies today is the best way to reduce the potential for large home-price declines in the future.’”

“Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, sees forces at work to lower prices. ‘Further increases in home prices and mortgage rates over the next year will likely dampen sales and home-price growth,’ he wrote in the August MarketPulse report. One thing’s for sure. Home prices cannot continue to rise at ‘overvalued’ rates.”

From Curbed Seattle in Washington. “It’s increasingly common for Seattle-area home listings to slash their asking prices, according to Zillow. While lowering an asking price isn’t totally uncommon, the percentage of listings cutting their prices has nearly doubled since last year in the Seattle metro area, which includes Tacoma, Everett, and Bellevue, rising from 6.9 percent in June 2017 to 12 percent in June 2018.”

“The difference is even more dramatic in Seattle proper, with more than double the listings asking less than when they were first listed, jumping from 4.3 percent to 10.7 percent over the same time period. Inventory has also only gone up, giving buyers more homes to choose from. Back in June, Seattle saw more than a month of inventory—a figure based on number of homes for sale and typical sales time—for the first time since September 2016, and it’s gone up since then.”

The Bellingham Business Journal in Washington. “As anyone who’s read the headlines knows, the real estate market in our area has been on a boom. The Seattle Times recently reported that the greater Seattle area has led the nation in home prices for 20 months in a row, tied for the second-longest streak. The last time we saw record-breaking prices like this was in the mid-2000s, and home buyers are understandably nervous. The real estate market in Whatcom County takes some of its cues from Seattle. Here are a few things I think you should consider given current market conditions.”

“The most important piece of advice I can give is to not panic. I strongly believe that unless we see a dramatic wage increase in the community to support the bulk of the market, real estate prices simply can’t continue the way they are. The real estate market in Whatcom County is already showing signs of slowing down. We’re beginning to see reduced prices and inventory sitting longer, which indicates we’ve likely seen the top of the curve. In the next year or two we should expect to see more affordable housing that is line with Whatcom County wages.”