What's next year bringing to
The California Association of Realtors
just released its 2010 forecast in front of several hundred real estate
agents gathered in
Given all the "wild cards" that may - or may not happen - who
knows for sure.
But first a couple foundations:
- 2010 sales will
likely fall below this year, when they were fueled by an explosion of
relatively cheap bank repos attractive to first-time buyers and investors.
CAR, the trade group for 172,000 real estate agents, predicts sales
of 527,500 homes in 2010 - 2.3 percent fewer than this year.
- Median prices will rise slightly. CAR estimates a 2010 median price of $280,000. That's 3.3 percent higher than this year's current estimate of $271,000.
Beyond that we get to the wild cards: the state budget crisis
that has cut hundreds of thousands of salaries across
Like other baffled analysts, CAR isn't sure what the banks are doing,
either, as they continue to drag out foreclosure schedules and remain slow to
put their thousands of repo listings on the market. A heavier-than-expected
wave of foreclosures, if it happens, would drive prices back down, said CAR's
Chief Economist Leslie Appleton-Young.
Yet, in a phone conversation this morning with Home Front, she said,
" I don't see a tsunami of foreclosures. I see an elevated level of
foreclosures over the next couple of years, and an acceleration in the rate of
foreclosures at the upper end of the market."
Problems in the upper end of the market are also part of the reason for
expectations of fewer sales next year. Buyers are still finding it harder to
get loans for those houses, and are especially skittish about buying in that
segment for fear that prices are going to fall. Much of the joblessness now is
hitting in the higher end of the market, and a stream of foreclosures there
could cause the same deflation that first struck the lower end,said
Appleton-Young.
Bottom line: "distress sale" properties that have this year accounted
for slightly over half of existing homes sales across the
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