HOUSINGNEWS REPORT
PERSISTENT HOME PRICE APPRECIATION PRESSURES MARKET ORTHODOXIES
Q3 2017 DOWN PAYMENT HEAT MAP MEDIAN DOWN PAYMENT ON SINGLE FAMILY HOME AND CONDO FINANCED PURCHASES ($55,667) $247,000
If Feldstein’s concern regarding a recession seems strange, consider that GDP grew by 3.2 percent in the third quarter but fell to 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter, a substantial decline even as the stock market was hitting new highs. The GDP is at least something to watch. The Pricing Divide Job opportunities across the country are expected to increase during the coming decade. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that an additional 11.5 million jobs will be added to the economy between 2016 and 2026. The catch is that the new jobs won’t necessarily be in the same places or require the same skills as the old ones. So-called “technological disruption” will require workers to retrain or lose out. takes hold, it typically enables a larger population of less-skilled or less affluent people to do things in a more convenient, lower-cost setting – things that previously could only be accomplished by specialists in less convenient, centralized settings. PCs, for example, brought computing power to individuals at a fraction of the cost of minicomputers, replacing the minicomputer specialist and centralized data centers in the process.” Traditionally people go where the jobs are. When Oklahoma became a dust bowl people moved to California. As the Harvard Business School explained in 2001 “once disruption
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landing’ will be a difficult but critical task for policymakers in 2018.”
time: the tax legislation will push up the federal deficit and federal debt burden; debt service costs will rise as interest rates normalize; and entitlement outlays will increase as the baby boom generation retires.” “The US economy has experienced nine recessions during the last 50 years,” wrote economist Martin Feldstein earlier this year. “What makes the current situation unusual and more worrying than in the past is the low level of short-term interest rates and the high (and rising) level of federal debt, which will limit policymakers’ ability to provide the stimulus needed to counter a recession.” Feldstein, by way of background, is an economics professor at Harvard and chaired President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984.
At some point the lengthy expansion the U.S. economy has enjoyed must come to an end and that could be a problem. “The current U.S. fiscal position is far worse than it was at the end of the last business cycle,” explains William C. Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dudley noted that “in fiscal year 2007, the budget deficit was 1.1 percent of GDP; in fiscal 2017, it was 3.5 percent of GDP. Similarly, federal debt held by the public was 35 percent of GDP in fiscal 2007, and 77 percent in fiscal 2017. Additionally, three factors will undoubtedly cause these budgetary pressures to intensify over
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FEBRUARY 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS
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