The good feeling you might have gotten after reading the lead story in last Thursday’s yahoo!finance was a lot like hearing welcome news at the doctor’s. If he tells you you’re in good health at the end of your annual checkup, it feels great—even if you hadn’t suspected anything was wrong. So when the yahoo!finance headline announced that “the housing market recession is over,” it was momentarily uplifting—even if you hadn’t worried about any true St. Cloud housing “recession.”

The article in question did make a reasonable case that for much of the U.S., a ‘buyer affordability shock’ stemming from ‘spiked mortgage rates’ had sent markets into a housing recession—but one that was pronounced only in some western housing markets “like Reno and Boise.” The direst areas had not only suffered a pullback in activity levels—there, full-blown price corrections had also taken place.

The article was based on a Fortune magazine investigation that sought to “understand what’s going on in the housing market.” Its major conclusions hadn’t included a definitive 100% “all-clear” for all areas of housing—but among them was an indication that, at least in the new home market, homebuilders have seen a significant improvement in sales. Last fall’s slowdown in building starts had proved temporary. Fears of a true recession, stoked by Fed Chair Powell’s remark that the nation was “passing through a difficult [housing] correction” ultimately proved to be unfounded. Existing home sales levels might not be showing a comparable breakout, but since inventory “remains tight,” price pressures haven’t developed. So now it was reasonable for yahoo!finance to declare “that so-called housing recession and housing correction looks long gone…” If the healthier sales figures hadn’t provided enough proof to convincingly support the point, there was a clincher: “Even Powell thinks the bottom is in.”

When it’s time to think seriously about whether to make a change in your own St. Cloud real estate holdings, it’s useful to get a feel for what the latest results tell us about buyer and seller sentiment. Give me a call anytime to chat about current local activity and the opportunities that are out there (and even some that are coming soon).

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