Even the strongest real estate markets now hit by housing downturn
For the longest time, you could consider yourself lucky if you happened to be selling a home in Binghamton, N.Y.
This community, the county seat of Broome County, N.Y., seemed to escape the housing downturn. According to a story in the USA Today, even through most of the mortgage crisis, homes here held their value. Sales didn’t skyrocket, but they remained steady.
But times have finally changed in Binghamton. According to the USA Today story, starting last March, the housing slump finally found this community. Sales started to slow. Home values started to dip. Even Binghamton, it seems, is not immune to the housing slowdown.
According to the story, in January, home sales dropped 27.8 percent when compared with the same month in 2008.
This story proves once again just how deep and far-reaching the current housing slump is. Yes, markets in California, Arizona, Florida and Nevada get the most press because housing prices there rose so fast during the housing boom and have fallen so far after it.
But as the Binghamton example shows, there are very, very few communities across the country that have been spared.
This is why it’s so important once the housing recovery does begin to avoid the mistakes that led to our current housing slide. That means real estate appraisers, loan officers and real estate agents can’t work together to boost housing prices to unrealistic levels. It means that mortgage loan officers can’t give loans even to those borrowers with poor credit histories, low incomes and high debt levels.
And it means that buyers can’t stretch themselves too thin financially just to get into that bigger home.
In short, we have to be prudent from now on. Can we do it? I sure hope so.
