Dr. Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s man with the economic plan
I recently attended a breakfast featuring Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, as keynote speaker. Dr. Yun recently received the honor of being named to the USA Today’s top 10 economic forecasters (NAR’s press release). As the release states, “The National Association of Realtors® Chief Economist Lawrence Yun has been named among the top 10 economic forecasters by USA Today. Yun is ranked fifth on the list and is responsible for NAR’s real estate statistics and economic forecasting. The annual list recognizes accuracy in forecasting.“
Yun spoke about the state of the current market and backed up his forecasts for the near term with statistical charts and graphs which were very helpful. He believes there will be a modest increase in home sales in the second half of 2008, but because of negative buyer psychology right now (i.e. prices are going down, have been going down, and might continue to keep going down, so why buy now?) the gains in home sales may not be very big. Yun essentially believes that the market is bottoming out right now and should stabilize by the end of this year and start gaining ground again in 2009, though not very rapidly.
It is interesting to note that prices fell nationally 1.5% in 2007. The NAR started keeping market statistics in 1967 and this had not happened in their entire time compiling this data. Dr. Yun believes, as do many others, that this is the first time prices have fallen year-over-year since the great depression in the late 1920s and early 1930s. I must caution you that we are nowhere near entering such a time this time around. The unemployment rate has risen, but nowhere near as drastically as back then. Inflation is steady. Many areas around the country are creating jobs, while the public has experienced the greatest amount of job loss in the midwest due to the struggling auto business and manufacturing/industrial decline in that area.