state of market

I must say I've been pretty shocked lately. A year ago I was working for a builder. A year before that the builder was on top of the world. Now the builder is completely under. The interesting thing has been watching the complete doom and gloom. I must say watching the builder go under was depressing. watching him loose so much money on deals made me sick. But it woke me up quickly to the reality of our situation. I reality that I maybe saw before most agents being in the new construction which was earlier and harder than the rest. 

So August 2008 marks 1 year of the credit crisis and I wanted to talk about some of the things I've seen and learned. 

1) We are stronger than I ever imagined. Sure I'm not saying we as a nation are indestructible, just stating the fact that we got hit hard and we are little standing. I never imagined that the entire world would feel the effects of the crunch... but they have. 

2) USA still effects the rest of the world in a big way. I remember hearing experts saying a year ago that we are a global economy and that the rest of the stocks won't be effected by the housing slump.... they were wrong. 

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of building start up again. Not anywhere near the levels of a year ago. But new construction non-the-less. Most of the projects are in the condo townhome range. 

I have as many buyers right now as I ever had. They are all really looking closely at the market and feel that they need to see every home out there in their price range. 

The difference is I can't believe how many strong cash buyer I've got right now. Perhaps other investments seem risky still right now and people with big cash pools are thinking why not buy while things are down. 

My over-all feel of the market right now here in Utah is a "B" confidence is down still too low to be an B+ but people are still out there. They are looking! I'm getting lots of calls. Well priced homes are moving quickly and people are writing offers. Banks and all the short sales are slowing things down still... people are getting easily distracted by really low short sale listing that the banks deny after 3 months and 6 offers. 

Things to watch for. I would really watch the rents here in the future. They went up quickly last year but have seemed to level off due to many desperate spec owners offering low rentals, lease to own, and owner financing. I'm convinced that it will still take a year or two to clear up existing home inventory. But when it does expect it to go quickly and not have many builders ready to catch the shortage which will push the rents up higher, closer to where they should be. 

Home values need to be looked at closely with possible rents. Right now most homes will cost a lot more than you could ever rent them for. Which in my mind either means they are still overpriced or rents have to come up. We have recently been hit really hard and caused a credit crunch. With population increase, time, and credit improvements inventory will only decrease. Prices have and will continue to stabilize and rents will be forced to increase.