It's time to make some predictions about how the real estate market will fare in Wisconsin's Northwoods in 2010. My crystal ball is just as murky as the ones belonging to all the other prognosticators, and my forecasts may be worth only what you are paying for it, but here goes:
Even though mortgage rates have trended down somewhat since the first of the year, they are once again going to turn upward soon, perhaps to about 6%, for the reasons
I previously wrote about. I don't see the rise in rates to be enough to severely impact our market, though it certainly won't help.
Most sales will remain in the lower end of the market, price-wise, and the upper end of the market will remain very slow, except in the instances wherein sellers have really and sincerely priced their high-end properties to sell.
The three most important things about real estate? In 2010 it will not be location, location, location, but rather location, price, price. I predict that 2010 will bring more buyers to the market than we have seen the last 2-3 years, and the primary motivation of many of these buyers will be the hope of purchasing a bargain property. I further predict a fair amount of success for buyers in 2010.
To prove that I am not merely blowing smoke with my predictions, I have done a little research using data from the Greater Northwoods Multiple Listing Service. The following chart represents total 4th quarter closings MLS-wide for the last 4 years for single family dwellings. Note that the trend line is up for all three months of the last quarter for 2009.
Y-axis is units of single family dwellings, not anything to do with dollars. I chose to chart units as my predictions have to do with numbers of buyers and not with dollar value of sales (though I could chart that, too.)