Dallas Real Estate: More Beer, Less Cheer for Dallas Homebuilders?
The housing news was so darn depressing all day I almost didn’t want to post, but alas, I’ve got to tell it like it is: I’m losing hope that we will see much new home activity in 2010. So are some Wall Street analysts – who are bouncing around this number — 2011. Well, at least it will make for a nice slogan: Oh Thank Heaven for 2011. Washington is mulling extension of the First Time Homebuyer credit, which ends November 30, which some say has artificially propped housing. (Personally, I have nothing against pain medication and had my epidural ready and waiting when in labor.) Was in the Hill Country this weekend where agents told me that moderate sales are quite brisk, what with first time home buyers and retirees buying modest homes. Which is just what the WSJ says: even the largest home builders are now churning out smaller homes for both home virgins and retirees. Here’s a few lines any real estate investor ought to memorize:
“When the market does start to pick up, the NAHB sees that happening two years from now, the landscape will be changed, literally. After a long run-up in median new home size, peaking at 2,309 square feet in 2007,home sizes shrank to 2,091 square feet in 2009. “It’s the largest decline ever seen,” said NAHB’s chief economist David Crowe. Since first-time buyers and their parents, the empty-nesters, will be the dominant demographic groups over the next decade, builders will cater to those groups more modest needs.“
Modest needs: does this mean the end of keeping rooms and industrial refrigerators, uber high end appliances? Might not be a bad time to invest in some 2/1’s or other starter homes IF there is any financing out there.
Tomorrow I’m meeting someone from Phoenix who says he’ll make me feel better after we talk: one in every 7 homes in Phoenix is in foreclosure. And here’s one place I found where you don’t need to be on Happy Pills if you are in real estate: Boerne, Texas.
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