Sometimes I am not sure if the recession is a roller coaster or if it is just the way the news media reports economic news. On the one hand good news seems to stimulate spending, but on the other hand it seems like really bad news comes out one day and the next day the same news gets a kind of ray-of-sunshine slant.
Bleak is a good word to describe the current housing market. I remember reading a couple of months ago about housing recovery. I wasn’t seeing any sign of it, but I suppose it gave me hope. There is one thing that we know for sure and that is that recessions don’t last forever and there is a kind of up and down that happens before the down of the recession ends and the up of the recovery begins. We won’t know when it ends and we didn’t know when it started; it takes economists a few months and some numbers to know what is going on.
The last time I heard news of a housing recovery I pretty much got off the roller coaster. Now I think in terms of a new normal that may last for a few years and I am focusing my energy and my resources on how to best meet the needs of this new normal.
I am encountering a different kind of home buyer, who are older and who have money and equity. I am not meeting many first-time home buyers, and when I do they too are older and have more resources. I am sure the young first-time home buyers will again buy homes. It has been kind of a normal part of life for decades. They will come back when they have great jobs, some money saved up and when buying a home starts to look less scary and more appealing.
This recession has been a roller coaster ride and the roller coaster in the picture is in the same place as the housing market is. We are coming off of a slight high becasue of the tax credits and heading into another dip. If the economic news is all sunshine and lollipops tomorrow I wouldn’t take it too seriously. If the news is more negative this week than last I wouldn’t worry about it. Things don’t change that fast and this recession is a longer ride than most.
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