Free Channahon Homes For Those Who Qualify

Well that headline might be somewhat (ok, alot) disingenuous. But as this RISMedia article, Low Prices and Cheap Loans Abound-But Where Are All The Home Buyers?, succinctly points out, now should be the time for Channahon home buyers to be making their move.

On paper, it’s the chance of a lifetime—a golden opportunity not to be missed.

Mortgage interest rates are at their lowest since 1971 and home prices have reached their lowest point since 2002, says IHS Global Insight Inc. economist Patrick Newport, and appear to be stabilizing.

So according to the article, why aren't buyers buying:

Unemployment and lingering uncertainty about the future rank high on a long list of reasons the housing market is still all bound up. Add folks’ inability to sell the homes they have so they can buy new ones, plus tight credit, low offers and too many people just out looking. 

I think the reality is that the $8000 homebuyer credit has been masking the issues the author raises. And now that the credit has disappeared, the mask has been dropped as well. Let me explain:

• Most of the buyers I've shown and sold homes to over the past 18 to 24 months have been 1^st time buyers. I'd say at least 90%.
• Many of them, though, decided to move up their decision to purchase a home because of the credit. Many of these buyers would have bought in 2010, 2011, or 2012 if not for the credit.
• What they tended to buy was empty, foreclosed homes. Their purchase did not create any new buyers in the marketplace.

So we sit here today with:

• No more artificial, financial incentive to buy.
• Many of today's potential buyers having already bought in 2008 & 2009. 
• The sales that are closing (foreclosures & short sales) are not creating new buyers.

Unfortunately, that final rush of buyers to grab the credit squeezed the last of the potential buyers in the market. So the grim reality may be that low prices and rates may not be effective if there are no buyers to take advantage of them.