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Predicting the Future

by Stephanie Sims

stephanie-sims

Stephanie Sims is Chicago Agent’s managing editor.

When it comes to predicting the future, it can be hit or miss. Sometimes, if trends are looking one way, it’s unlikely they’ll revert and start going the complete opposite way (although you never know).

Back when the housing market was 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. Well…we don’t think that happened exactly. But we’re almost there. The good news is we are closer to attaining pre-bubble prices and values, the market is incrementally increasing, and our panel of experts predict that the market will keep slowly trending upward as we move through 2015.

What did happen this year? The job market made some gains, which in turn, should help the mortgage market and home sales for next year. In addition, the influx in jobs in both the city and suburbs is helping not only the housing market, but also the Millennials, the one generation that needs to have all the stars align in order to start making home purchases and really benefit the market; after all, with so much student debt, job instability and insufficient savings, Millennials aren’t quite ready to buy – but the job market continues to improve, and if Millennials do begin to buy in 2015, the housing market will only benefit.

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. And you can follow the trends and what happened in terms of agent and office sales volume, transaction volume and the highest-closed homes by county in 2014 in our issue of Real Data, online in January.

What are your predictions? Do you agree or disagree with our panel? 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@agentpublishing.com.

We hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday season. Here’s to a great 2015!

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