Another Challenging Real Estate Year Ahead?
December 24th, 2009 categories: Chicago Info/News, Economic Recovery, For Buyers, For Homeowners, For Sellers, Housing Market
As 2009 comes to a close, the newspapers are filling their pages with “Top 10” lists, counting down the top movies, music, books, sporting events and news stories of the past year. These lists are always fun to read. But whenever a year ends, I prefer to look ahead to the next one, not back at the one that’s coming to a close.
Being a REALTOR®, I naturally focus on the prospects for the Chicago housing market. By skimming the newspapers and Web sites, I’ve found that many financial experts are warning us that 2010 will be another challenging year for residential real estate.
The financial Web site Bankrate.com recently ran a feature in which several of these experts looked ahead to 2010. The consensus was that home prices would continue to fall in the coming year.
Of course, no one wants to read this. But it looks as if the real estate market’s correction will continue. The story, for instance, quoted the financial pros at Economy.com who predicted that housing prices nationally would fall 5 percent to 10 percent in 2010.
What’s bad news for sellers, though, is good news for buyers. I know of many potential homebuyers who, inspired by the federal government’s move-up buyer and first-time homebuyer tax credits, are eager to purchase a home in 2010. They can be reassured that Chicago housing prices, even in top neighborhoods such as Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Lakeview and Roscoe Village, will remain at affordable levels in the coming 12 months.
I don’t want to end the year on a negative note. So I’ll also mention that 2009, while a challenging year, saw the start of what I believe will be a long and steady housing market recovery in Chicago. We saw home sales rise throughout most of the last half of the year in the city. And I expect that we’ll see them continue to tick upward during 2010.
The next 12 months certainly won’t be easy for the nation as a whole. But I firmly believe that the seeds to an overall economic recovery were planted in 2009. And I’m looking forward to watching as the country and its housing markets rebound from their long slumps.
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Hi! Hope you have a great year. I always look forward every year as more challenging than the previous one. I thought this year would be bad for me but it turn out to be one my best year with selling properties in North Cyprus. Heck, I even closed a deal before the year ends.
-Owe