A Housing Shortage on the Horizon?

SmartMoney (7/26/10); Lisa Scherzer

A Housing Shortage on the Horizon?

If you take a step back from the current doom and gloom of foreclosures and declining sales and focus on the low construction levels over the past few years, some economists say a housing shortage might be in the offing. A 2009 report by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor William Wheaton says that despite the glut of existing homes, with current depressed levels of construction, there might be “excess demand” for newly constructed homes. We’re only adding about 600,000 new housing units a year now, and the long-term growth in new households is 1.3 million to 1.4 million per year, says Ross DeVol, executive director of economic research at the Milken Institute. The household formation rate has fallen off somewhat because of the recession. But that decline is misleading because college graduates have chosen to live at home with their parents while they find their financial footing, and people defer getting married for a year or two. But long term, that household growth says that “if we build substantially less than that amount, which we’re doing now, in four, five or six years, if we don’t ramp up housing starts, we could see a shortage,” DeVol says. One risk is that so many home builders leave the field during the current downturn that there could be “capacity constraints” in the long term as the U.S. population continues to grow, says John Vogel, professor of real estate at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. There won’t be constraints in overbuilt places like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Riverside, Calif., or Miami and Ft. Lauderdale. But if the pace of home construction doesn’t pick up, “we are going to begin to see some tightness in some areas of the country that didn’t have the boom and bust occur,” DeVol says. The regions most likely to be undersupplied by mid-2012 are those where supply and demand are now in balance, says Celia Chen, senior director of housing economics at Moody’s. Chen includes states like Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Utah in this group.

New iPhone App For House Hunters

Have you ever been driving around, stumbled upon a house that’s for sale but there isn’t any information available?  Whether you’re just looking for fun or you’re actively looking for a new home, the “myAgent by IDX” is an awesome tool to receive local real estate listings at your finger tips.

Using GeoTracking, the app identifies where you’re located and pulls up all the actives listings in the area.  Plotted on a map you’ll see where each house is located – scroll over the little house image and you’ll get additional information about that specific home (price, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and the public remarks from RMLS). 

Here’s how to get it!  There are two ways to download and install:

1.       From your desktop computer, click here to open iTunes on your local system, which will bring up the “myAgent by IDX” application. Click to install the app – you will need to enter the agent code “7125-55” when prompted.  The next time your phone is synced to your computer, the app will be installed on your phone.

2.       Or, from your iPhone, go to the App Store, and search for “myAgent by IDX”. Click to install the myAgent app.   ***Important:  when you open the app for the first time on your iPhone, the program will ask for your agent code. Type in “7125-55”. This will give you permission to access the current data through your phone.

The data for this application is pulled directly from RMLS and works well within the Google mapping system when searching for properties, as well as viewing results throughout the greater Portland area.

Please share with your friends, family and colleagues.  No more wishing there were flyers in the box, no more questioning the list price or how many bedrooms – get the answers at the tip of your fingers on every active listing!  Of course, call me if you have additional questions – this app will only provide high level information.

Have a good one – Happy Hunting!

~Kori