Market & Trends: SIZING UP 2024
Better Times Ahead? A Look at the Midyear 2024 Housing Market REAL ESTATE INVESTORS REMAIN OPTIMISTIC ABOUT MARKET RECOVERY AND POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES.
RICK SHARGA
M ost real estate investors are optimists, anticipating better times ahead. That was borne out recently in the Summer 2024 RCN Capital Investor Sentiment Survey, where 60% of the respondents felt that today’s investing market was as good or better than it was a year ago; 61% believed the market would be the same or better in the months ahead. All this optimism even though the housing market today seems to be, to put it kindly, in a bit of a slump. Is there a reason for all this optimism?
Let’s take a look at where the market is today and think about where it might be headed in 2025 to get some answers. HOME SALES CONTINUE DOWNWARD SPIRAL After peaking at over six million sales in 2021, the number of existing homes sold has dropped precipitously to just over five million homes sold in 2022 and right around four million in 2023, marking the lowest number of homes sold in the United States in the past 25 years. Forecasters were
hopeful the market had bottomed out last year, and most predicted a lift of 10-15% in the number of sales. Instead, June marked the 34th consecutive month where fewer homes were sold across the country than the year prior, at an annualized rate of 3.89 million sales. It also continued a troubling counter-seasonal trend of home sales falling during the spring and summer months instead of increasing as they have traditionally. Affordability, or the lack thereof, is the main culprit behind these lackluster
14 | think realty magazine :: september - october 2024
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter