I wanted to add up all the
1) Removal or reworking of the Growth Management Act..................possibility, but a remote one
2) Relaxing of environmental building restrictions..............................an even more remote possibility.
3)
..............will global warming make our weather worse? will more residents make traffic worse?
4) Interest rates rise dramatically...........................................................don’t see that on the near-term horizon
5) Restrictions by the Federal govt. on lending practices......................likely, but how far will they go and how soon will any take effect?
6) Buyers going on strike.......................................................................to some extent, happening already.
Talk of a ‘Bubble’ predisposes on-the-fence buyers to stay on the unbuying side of the fence.
Making mortgages more difficult to get causes buyers to think twice before committing.
Having house prices escalate beyond what local incomes can support puts dampers on buying.
Summarizing from these, a per se Bubble doesn’t seem likely to me, but significant slowdown does. Buyers incomes have been stretched seriously by recent price rises, putting downward pressure on prices. But location desirability and jobs are still here, so incomes are not evaporating. Buyer mindsets regarding house-buying have taken a turn for the worse, but mindsets don’t last forever, especially if objective conditions don’t support keeping them.
On the other hand, will interest rates decline? Interest rates don’t appear to be controllable by any government.
Will sellers stop selling houses if buyers go on strike? This has happened before as well. Decreasing supply could match decreasing demand, and the result could be not much price movement at all.
So it appears that these factors would combine to slow the
What would J.P Patches do?
No comments:
Post a Comment