Housing Is In An Overcorrection, Not A Recession

It would be easy to look at major trade association housing news and be discouraged, but there’s some evidence a rebound is just around the corner.

If you look at some metrics besides housing prices and sales, there’s good reason to be optimistic. Here’s why:

Affordability is greatly improved for home buyers

The National Association of Realtors announced last week that median housing prices are down to $200,500, nine percent lower than third quarter 2007, and that’s following more than two years of price declines. Only 28 out of 152 metropolitan statistical areas tracked by the NAR showed increases in median existing single-family home prices from the same quarter in 2007. 

Prices have rolled back in many areas to 2003 or earlier. The result is number of potential home buyers nationwide who can afford to buy a new or existing home is the highest in four years, says the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index. 

According to the index, the median home buyer income of $61,500 allowed 56.1 percent of homes to be sold as “affordable.” That’s 15 percent more than the 40.4 percent of families who could afford homes at the peak of the housing boom, says the report. 

Now this figure is based on those that stepped up and purchased. The news gets better for those on the sidelines. 

The national median family income is $44,928 in NAR’s latest housing affordability index which would qualify those families for a home costing $257,700 using conventional lending criteria with 20% down. First time buyers could qualify for about 80 percent of that amount, says Walt Molony, a NAR spokesperson.

That means the median price home is $57,200 less than the median income qualifies to buy. That’s affordable, folks. May not apply in your area, but it’s good news nonetheless.

Housing Inventories Still High

Yes, that’s good news, too. For buyers. While foreclosures and short sales were a whopping 35 to 40 percent of transactions in the third quarter, homebuilders kept adding to the inventory by continuing to build the wrong products according to the U.S. Census.

"The underlying trends in fundamental demand factors point toward the need for 1.9 to 2.0 million housing units per year —composed of 1.5 million single family units, between 350 and 400 thousand multifamily units, and between 100 and 150 thousand manufactured homes.”