The Puget Sound Business Journal just ran an article quoting Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, explaining why he thought the Seattle area was not due for a housing crash similar to the one seen in some parts of California.
This makes sense, seeing as we didn’t have the enormous price run-ups that those areas did prior to the start of the market decline. I’ve linked to the article above, but here’s what struck me:
On the one hand, I’m talking to agents with listings in the first time home buyer price range, and when the home is priced correctly it still sells quickly. I called on a listing in West Seattle a week ago and the agent said that not only were things quite busy, but the listing that I was calling on (which had been listed two days before) had already received two offers.
The first time home buyer credit of $8,000 is certainly going to boost demand as well. However, as Yun noted, there’s also a lot of uncertainty right now, and that is holding people back.
Without meaning to sound snarky, the main thing that struck me was that Mr. Yun has made predictions recently that turned out to be completely wrong, including the one I mentioned in this post, when in May 2008 he predicted a market upturn by the end of the year.
I don’t envy anyone whose job it is to predict what will happen with the economy, and I haven’t followed all of this economist’s forecasts over the years to see how accurate they are. However, it really makes sense to try to rely more on information from people with good recent track records. That, and the ‘word on the street’ I hear from agents, which always seems to be two months ahead of what the Seattle Times writes about.
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