Redfin Warns of Continued Failing Housing Market in 2023
- Author: Mary Singleton
- Posted: 2024-09-04
The entirety of America's economy has been in shambles since COVID hit in 2020. Inflation is up, which has caused price hikes on fuel and food. The jobs market is unstable, with hardly any new jobs created at all and so much part-time work that's counted as full-time that no data can be trusted. And the housing market is just bottoming out a little more every day. Rather than a miraculous rebound for the American housing market, some are warning of impending doom in the years to come. According to Redfin, one of America's premier housing authorities, they are expecting a huge drop in the market in 2023. Unfortunately, most economists and housing experts agree. There seems to be nothing done for the housing market, and no one is coming to rescue it. The housing market doesn't have its own Elon Musk willing to rush in and put $44 billion of equity into it. Instead, it has a bunch of people trying to profit from its collapse.
If you asked anyone in 2010 if they thought 2008's housing collapse could happen again, most people would have shouted "No!" at the top of their lungs. After all, how could anyone let those dominoes stack back up again, just to fall? But according to Redfin and other authorities, that's exactly what's happening now. The CEO of the company said that they expect home sales to continue to plummet, due to the fact that sites like Redfin are being forced to lay off up to 13% of their staff. On top of that, mortgage rates are spiking out of control, with inflation still rising, and that's causing a very explosive situation where more and more people cannot afford to pay their mortgages. Does any of that sound familiar? You might start having nightmares about George W. Bush at this rate.
What makes matters worse here is that consumer confidence is really down near an all-time low. Some say America is already in a recession, while others say not yet, but soon. Either way, the economic spending in America acts as if the country is in the middle of a recession, and this is certainly reflected by the housing market in totality. Even though the housing shortage has continued to worsen, the rising home prices have actually reversed and are now falling down. This is due to the fact that fewer people have the confidence to buy homes. Home sales are almost entirely propped up now by multinational corporations.
Nero Loves his Fiddle
The story of Roman Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned is a great story to learn about. It's highly unlikely to be true, but it's a fantastic story. In many ways, the United States of America is absolutely loaded to the point of bursting with fiddlers. The huge corporations that handle mortgages, and the government that dictates when and where houses can be built; and they're all standing back just watching the housing market burn. The government has plenty of money to give to foreign nations. These huge multinational companies have plenty of money to buy up new properties. Though when it comes to flooding the market with new homes, the same way the government demands the Fed floods the market with money, nothing is happening. Housing inflation, as in the addition of new homes, would be a historic boom for the market. It would lower prices, quell the housing shortage, and spur lending. But nothing even remotely resembling construction is happening with the entities that control the entire housing market.
It would be perhaps too cynical to suggest that the people in charge of the housing market want it to collapse. Despite all of those "Great Reset" videos and articles floating around, it's still hard to believe that anyone would actively want other human beings to suffer. Though if it's not purposeful, then it has to be the best example of sheer incompetence in history. It's not as if the Biden administration doesn't know how much the housing market is suffering. But not a single word has been spoken about it, and not a single dollar has been granted toward it. To date, the single-most important market in America, outside of oil, is failing no one even acknowledges the problem.
Hopefully things will happen in the coming months to spur a slight rebound, or to at least stave off those dire Redfin predictions. Americans are a resilient people, and they may have to prove that very soon.