A stimulus package.
A Presidential Election.
A $7,500 first-time home buyer credit.
Historically low interest rates.
Increased Loan Limits.
How did these policies and changes in 2008 affect our local real estate market? Let’s take a look:
The Verdict? Volume went down, prices went down, and time on the market went up. Not a big surprise. But what does this mean heading into 2009?
-Opportunities for affordable housing are in the buyers favor
-Low interest rates makes affordable housing prices into affordable monthly payments
-Opportunities for increased equity years from now are huge
We are clearly in a buyers market here in Northern Virginia. If you’re looking for the “bottom,” you may have already missed it. Remember the saying “hindsight is 20/20″? That’s because you only know when you’ve hit bottom after you’ve passed it.
Data discussed for Northern Virginia includes the following: Counties of Fairfax and Arlington; cities of Alexandria, Falls Church, Fairfax; towns of Vienna, Herndon and Clifton. (Loudoun County not included in Northern Virginia data). All data was supplied from NVAR.com.
[...] The dust has settled on the statistics for 2009 – so now I can be my real geeky self and show you how the market did last year. I’m going to compare the sales to 2008 and 2007, but I did a similar review last year. [...]