Is housing finally at the bottom?
Those watching the real estate market — or anyone hoping to sell a home — are all waiting eagerly for one thing: the bottom.
That “bottom,” of course, is the bottom of the housing market. And many of us have thought we’d already hit it. Then things get worse, and we realize that there was still a ways for housing prices and sales to fall before that bottom finally hit.
We all want the bottom for one reason: Once you hit it, things can’t help but get better.
Well, at least two analysts out there think that we are finally either at or near the bottom. Hallelujah, right? Maybe. Not everyone, of course, agrees with these two analysts.
In a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, two respected financial analysts, Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com and David Crowe of the National Association of Home Builders, said that there is now, at long last, reason for optimism in the housing market.
Zandi, in particular, is quoted in the story as saying that the housing industry is at a bottom.
That’s good news. But this being 2009, there is some gloom to report, too. Even if we are at the bottom, Zandi said, it will probably still take three to four years to return to what he referred to as “historic levels of home building.”
In other words, even if we are at the bottom, don’t break out the champagne just yet. There’s still a long slog ahead of us before the housing market’s back in top shape.
