0
0
0

2014: A New Frontier

by Stephanie Sims

stephanie-sims-chicago-agent-magazine-managing-editor

Chicago Agent Managing Editor Stephanie Sims

When the end of the year arrives, everyone wants to know: what will happen next year? We’ve heard several predictions during these last few months that range from, “Everything will come crashing and burning down by 2015!” to “The market will take off next year – we’re just about at pre-recession pricing!”

While the data doesn’t necessarily support everyone’s predictions, and predicting the housing market for the year ahead can be difficult, we can tell you this – and you can see for yourself in our issue of Real Data, online in January – while it may have started off slow, the last half of 2013 was full of incremental growth. 

Back when we were experiencing even slower growth and tiny positive gains, many agents and economists predicted that 2014 would be the year we’d see a full housing recovery, meaning a return to pre-bubble home prices and values. Now that 2014 is around the corner, we asked an expert panel, made up of top agents, managing brokers, developers, lenders and data analyzers, for their predictions.

While a full housing recovery wasn’t a prediction among their answers, there are a lot of positives we should expect  next year: with home prices and values rising, more sellers will enter the market next year; although interest rates will rise, it won’t be a big enough percentage to deter many buyers; and new construction development will remain consistent from 2013 to 2014. While a full recovery is most likely a bit down the road, at least our panel agrees that next year, the market will still trend upward – just slowly.

What about you? What are your predictions? And with New Year’s resolution-making time coming up soon, are you making any that have to do with your business? Feel free to email me with your thoughts and feedback on this issue, news stories, current events in the industry or your own predictions for next year: stephanie@chicago.staging312.com.

We hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season and remainder of 2013. Here’s to a happy 2014!

Read More Related to This Post

Join the conversation

New Subscribe

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.