Weekly Market Update and Warren Buffett'
Last week, 4/16-4/23, Hamilton County had 125 homes go under contract and Marion County saw 304 homes go under contract. Our reporting does not count this past weekend, which unless extended, will have been the last home shopping weekend to take advantage of the Home Buyer Tax Credit. By all accounts the tax credit worked. We have been saying for about a year now that with interest rates so low, free money available, and prices down from their 2007 highs this has been an amazing time to buy a home.
The remaining question is how will the housing market fare when standing on it's own? Our prediction is that in that the summer months will be down as many of the would be summer and early fall first time homebuyers purchased homes earlier than expected to take advantage of the tax credit. Fall and Winter should be in line with previous averages and we should begin to see a normally increasing numbers by next March.
Financier Warren Buffett on the state of the housing market:
"Within a year or so, residential housing problems should largely be behind us," Buffett wrote Saturday in his annual letter to the shareholders of his Berkshire Hathaway. "Prices will remain far below 'bubble' levels, of course, but for every seller or lender hurt by this there will be a buyer who benefits. Indeed, many families that couldn't afford to buy an appropriate home a few years ago now find it well within their means."
