On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors® issued a press release based on the latest pending home sales data. Lawrence Yun, chief economist of NAR concludes from that data that things are looking like a recovery in 2008. This could be a sensible reading from the recent data, but NAR also urges the Federal Reserve to make an unprecedented rate cut of three-quarters of a percentage point at the end of January. Since that’s not likely to happen, perhaps the NAR forecast of an early recovery for the housing market is too optimistic. (A thought of caution from this Flagstaff real estate agent.) Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke, citing increased evidence that they economy may be heading for a recession, said the Fed is prepared for “substantive” cuts. But even Wall Street interpreted that to mean at most a half-percentage point. While rate cuts by the Fed do not directly affect mortgage rates, they do affect the economy. (For a recent discussion of how home loan rates relate to Federal Reserve interest rates, see What Will Another Fed Rate Cut Mean for Home Loan Rates?) If we’re in a recession, mortgage rates are less likely to rise. But if there are inflation concerns, mortgage rates are likely to rise. Given these competing pressures, home loan rates are likely to be about where they are now for several more months. I chatted with one of Liz Fontanini, our mortgage channel blogger, and she said that her firm, Wallick and Volk, has the same prognosis. Mortgage rates move slightly every day, but which direction they will move tomorrow may be different from the way they moved today, or the next day. If we fall into a recession that lasts a calendar quarter or more, Flagstaff’s housing recovery will be postponed further. Besides low interest rates (which we have), a reasonably priced housing supply (for some, we have that), consumer confidence is needed to keep the Flagstaff housing market moving. We’ve seen a bit more buyer traffic since December, which indicates increased demand for Flagstaff homes, but we’ve also seen more opportunities for listings of homes for sale. So demand may or may not be keeping up with supply of homes for sale. We’ll know more about that as we watch the statistics over the next month. For now, I’m sticking to what I’ve said for the last few months regarding the Flagstaff housing market: Don’t expect a price increase for most Flagstaff neighborhoods until 2009. The Phoenix market needs to come back up first, and it is one of the one-third of U.S. real estate markets that has not yet shown a swing upward after the decline that began in the late summer of 2006. Flagstaff’s housing decline lagged the Phoenix decline by about six months, I expect the same pattern on the upswing. |
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