Impending recovery?
Commercial real estate has been one of the hardest hit sectors since the economy crashed, but according to the National Association of Realtors, there is optimism going into 2012 regardless of the status of Europe’s own crises. Dr. Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at NAR spoke with Realtor Magazine in the video above to outline the improvements in commercial real estate, notably in the multi-family sector as rents clime, vacancies drop and the stigma usually attached to renting has been shed.
Dr. Yun notes that retail struggles the most and while industrial will see improvement in 2012, it won’t be a “robust recovery.” His outlook for residential real estate for 2012 was equally cautious yet optimistic (full report here).
As home prices drop to 2003 levels according to S&P/Case-Shiller, and with 10.7 million homes in America owing more on their mortgage than their home is now worth, economists are scrambling to call the bottom of the housing market. Yun’s outlook is realistic with his forecasts, projecting slight growth across the real estate industry, others say we haven’t quite bottomed out to the point of recovery quite yet.
Noted economist Barry Ritholtz recently said that the slow motion crash in housing will continue and predicts that we are only in the 5th inning of a 9 inning game wherein values may continue to drop.
