Housing Price Fallout
With 2007 dwindling down to its final week, analysts are scrambling to make some sense of the turbulent economic scene. According to a national survey of home-price trends released yesterday, the housing market has been steadily worsening with no signs of immediate improvement.
To put some perspective on this trend, The Home Price Index (Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller) demonstrates that single-family home prices in the ten biggest market-areas fell 6.7% between October 06 and October 07. This stat breaks the old record of 6.3%, which was set back in April of 1991.
So why no immediate signs of improvement forecasted? Housing prices will continue to tumble as record-high numbers of foreclosures continues to flood an already overloaded market with even more homes.
At the same time stricter lending rules will make financing for potential buyers even tougher to secure. Declining values and stricter lending requirements will affect current homeowners as well by making it duly more difficult to tap into their home’s equity for cash.
About the only positive spin on this economic turmoil is that savvy investors can use this instability to purchase stocks at all-time lows. Since the market is bound eventually recover, riding out the storm can be very lucrative to those with the presence of mind to hold steady.
