Dive Brief:
- In his part of a series of economists' views on the U.S. housing market going forward, Tom Showalter, chief analytics officer for the firm Digital Risk, says he thinks the U.S. has a fundamental problem because median income has gone down 8% since 2007 and there is no sign that will change soon.
- Price appreciation will not continue outside of some cities or "microeconomies" that do not follow the national trend.
- First-time buyers are, as many observers have said, not in the market like they once were, move-up buyers are recovering from the crash but lack the down-payment savings they once had, and baby boomers are trading down, not up, when they retire.
Dive Insight:
Showalter is not in the camp of people who fear a new bubble is ready to pop. Some of that thinking comes from a price-to-income ratio among borrowers that is higher than it traditionally is in the U.S. He dismisses that concern because having 40% of sales recently be cash deals takes those high-net-worth people out of the borrowing pool and skews the numbers.