Stormy fall ahead for home prices?
So says Clear Capital in its latest survey of real estate values across the country.
Plummeting consumer confidence and stubbornly high unemployment could make for a tough fall and an even gloomier winter, the housing market tracker predicts.
Don't worry. I am sure everyone is feeling a lot better now after Obama's big jobs speech last night!
Still, Greater Boston heads into the fall in a better position than many other markets.
It's listed near the top of Clear Capital's list of best performing markets - prices were up 9.7 percent over the summer compared to the spring. That was almost enough to erase the declines of the first few months of the year, with Greater Boston prices, at the end of August, just .1 percent below the levels of August, 2010.
Certainly, the local market didn't roll over and die this summer, as some had expected, with a fair amount of open house activity deep into the hot weather months.
If nothing else, it was a step up from last summer, when the market went completely dead after the expiration of the home buyer tax credit in April 2010. (On that note, pending home sales were up 7.1 percent in August and pending condo sales rose 11 percent, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors reports.)
Still, consumer confidence in Massachusetts right now is actually below that of the rest of the country, despite a significantly lower jobless rate.
Yet even if many would-be home buyers are hunkering down in their apartments and cramped Capes, the feared double dip in prices has so far been fairly shallow here in Greater Boston.
So will fall finally bring the long-awaited plunge in Greater Boston home prices? We'll just have to wait and see, but I am not betting the house on it.
