People Haven’t Been Moving: Will That Change Soon?
June 10th, 2009 categories: Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, homeowners lately have been staying put. They haven’t been moving nearly as often as they were back in 2006 and earlier.
I wonder, though, if we’ll see this start to change. Housing sales rose in Chicago in both April and March. Are U.S. homeowners getting ready to start reserving moving vans in greater numbers again?
Personally, I think so. The housing market in Chicago, and across much of the nation, is showing signs that it is finally stabilizing. It looks like the buyers that were waiting for the perfect time to start making offers have finally swung into action. I imagine the moving companies will be busy for some time.
Mary Umberger, the real estate columnist for the Chicago Tribune, recently wrote about some interesting statistics from the Census Bureau. Researchers found that only 12 percent of the country’s overall population changed houses between 2007 and 2008.
That figure is the lowest it’s been since the Census Bureau began to collect this data in the 1940s. It’s also a drop of 1.3 percent from one year earlier. That’s a significant drop in the world of statistics.
According to Umberger’s column, a more natural rate of moving would be about 14 percent.
The reasons for this dip are fairly obvious: Home values were falling, so many sellers were only putting their condominiums and single-family homes on the market if they absolutely had to. At the same time, buyers were waiting for housing prices to fall even lower. It was the perfect recipe for a dip in the number of people moving from one residence to another.
With housing prices finally stabilizing, and buyers re-entering the market, I wager that we’ll see those Census Bureau numbers rising again. This is good news for home sellers, who have been eagerly awaiting the buyers’ return.
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