So where is the bottom of this market? The $64,000 question to be sure.
More important than where the bottom is how long will we be there once we are there?
Is it possible that a long forgotten engine of real estate buying and selling is about to spur this dead real estate market? That engine being the anticipation of rising interest rates.
Over the past 8 years the model has been that lower rates and skyrocketing prices drove the market but Lydian Dameron who owns and operates Allan Dameron Realty in Holden Beach, North Carolina, has a slightly different outlook on the market moving forward.
Her position is that the combination of low prices (that in her area hearken back to 2004 and 2003) combined with the specter of rising interest rates is pulling buyers into the marketplace.
Real estate brokers are (and should be) less concerned with what price properties are selling for and more concerned with the pipeline of prospective buyers and the hurdles they will face getting to closing once they make an offer.
The tightening of credit and the near overzealous scrutiny on appraisals and comparables will continue to dogged brokers and agents as they try to get their clients (both buyers and sellers) to closing.
