Real Estate Forecast 2013: The Housing Market
By Eric Reid
(Renaissance Realty Group of Keller Williams Atlanta Partners)
The usual way of discussing housing problems is misleading. Foreclosures, short sales, shadow inventory, upside-down mortgages are all symptoms. The fundamental problem that we have is an excess supply of housing units. The normal housing vacancy rate for owned property (single family houses and condos not in the rental market) is around 1.5 percent nationally. Our high was three percent, but we are now down to 2.1 percent. Rental properties are normally about seven to eight percent vacant. (Local norms may be higher or lower.) We reached a peak of 11 percent rental vacancy a few years ago, but have improved to 8.6 percent in the latest observation. Despite recent gains, we still have too many houses for the current level of demand. The improvement we’ve seen recently results from a s...
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