“Housing to slow growth in 2008″
Based on recent predictions by financial forecaster Global Insight, provided to the US Conference of Mayors, the Raleigh-Cary economic growth is expected to decline by more than 20 percent next year. The Raleigh-Cary real estate market has been more or less sheltered from the national housing slump and has just recently noticed a slow down with more homes on the market than this time last year (however, interestingly, appreciation of homes has gone up 5% to 6%). Although we have been expecting the national real estate downturn to affect our market for a while, as in the past, we do not anticipate our area to experience the dramatic economic downtown as seen in many of our other national real estate markets. Real estate appreciation rates in the Wake County area for the last ten years has been 1996 3.4%; 1997 3.8%; 1998 4.2%; 1999 3.9%; 2000 3.1%; 2001 4.4%; 2002 2.4%; 2003 2.1%; 2004 3%; 2005 4.8%; 2006 6.2% The coming year will be interesting one as our market is influenced by the national downturn in the housing market while facing the predicted 1.4 million foreclosures (nationally) and the pending reset of millions of adjustable rate mortgages. The Raleigh-Cary real estate market still has something that many of the other areas do not – job growth! We continue to attract high tech industries and our companies are continuing to grow. What a great area to be investing in real estate!
