Boston Condos for Sale and Apartments for Rent
Can the Boston condo market go from “Boom to Doom?”
The headline writers are having fun with the current real estate market. They must challenge each other with whom can come up with the most outrageous headline, regardless of what’s in the article.
In this week’s article, he says, “that we’ve officially moved from a housing boom into a “housing correction.”
“The housing market has peaked…everything points to a rolling over of the housing market,” Zandi says. “In terms of home sales, they’re falling sharply. Housing demand is coming down fast. Home price growth [will] go flat here pretty quickly; we will see [home] price declines in a significant number of markets.”
But further into the article, they lay out the caveat that you see in every doomer article:
To be clear, Zandi doesn’t see a 2008-style housing bust or foreclosure crisis. While the spike in mortgage rates has pushed the housing market into the upper bounds of affordability, we don’t have the credit issues that plagued us last time. Homeowners are financially better off than they were in the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis. This time around, Zandi says, we also don’t have widespread subprime mortgages. Also, if nationwide home prices do begin to plummet, he says, the Fed could always ease up on mortgage rates.
That said, Zandi says some regional housing markets have become historically “overvalued” and could see home prices decline 5% to 10% over the coming year. If a recession does come, Zandi says price drops in those markets could grow to between 10% to 20%.
Buried further is the map (above) that shows the areas with the greatest odds of home-price declines. There aren’t many, and none are in Massachusetts.
Boston Condos for Sale and the Bottom Line
None of these analysts want to consider that to have home prices decline, there has to be Boston condo sellers who are wiling to sell for less. It’s much more likely – like 10x more likely – that our market will just stall out as Boston condo sellers wait it out, rather than take less. They’re not going to give it away!
