Employment Survey Offers Good News For Homeowners
March 15th, 2012 categories: Chicago Real Estate News
Homeowners looking for signs of a future rebound in the U.S. housing market received some good news from a March employment report. And though it’s far too early to offer any solid predictions, the report offers some hope that housing values might be ready to start rising again soon.
According to a story by Bloomberg, ADP Employer Services reported that companies in the United States added 216,000 employees to their payrolls in February. That gain follows a January in which companies added 173,000 workers.
This is good news for the economy. As the Bloomberg story says, employment gains help generate the wage increases that are necessary to keep U.S. household spending at higher levels. Household spending is an especially important figure because it accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. economy.
In other words, if U.S. households are spending money, the U.S. economy is doing well. If they’re not? Then the economy slumps.
Homeowners, of course, want a strong economy. The stronger the economy, the more likely consumers are to make the large investments needed to purchase homes. And if consumers buy more homes, the supply of for-sale residential properties on the market will eventually shrink.
The law of supply and demand tells us what happens next: When supply falls, demand increases. When demand rises, so do prices.
This is what homeowners are waiting for, the day when housing values, both in Chicago and across the nation, finally start to rise again. It’s been a long time, and housing values in Chicago are still far below the peaks that they saw in the first half of 2006. But as the economic experts quoted in the Bloomberg story say, the numbers today are pointing toward broader employment gains.
In other words, expect companies to boost their hiring in the coming months. And if that happens, a housing recovery will at last be within view.
