Single Family Home Buyers May Return

"Tuesday morning at the MBA CREF12 Conferencesaw predictions from two of the association’s research and economic gurus, including one in which the late spring and early summer sees a surge in single family home buyers. The two—chief economist and SVP, Research and Education Jay Brinkmann and VP, Commercial/Multifamily Research Jamie Woodwell—also touched on their overall predictions for the commercial and multifamily markets.

During this, the Second General Session, Brinkmann said that when fourth quarter 2011 numbers came in, “a lot of people were somewhat surprised and disappointed by how low they appeared,” but that the numbers were “right on top of” their forecast. “We weren’t expecting the growth in fourth quarter that some others were expecting.” Behind the slowdown, Brinkmann said, was a large buildup of inventory.

“We really expect to see that going into 2012 we’re going to have subpar growth for most of the year, increasing somewhat toward the end as certain tax provisions have their effect,” he said. “We don’t expect consumers to be back.” The unknowns, he said, driving the forecast were largely international. He hit on two major regions that he told the crowd would work their way out toward the latter part of the spring and early part of the summer: Europe and Iran.

“It’s not clear that the improvements that were seen in the job market will continue to the same degree that we’ve seen them over the last few months,” Brinkmann added. “It was good news, but not great news.”

A bright spot, however, emerged when Brinkmann turned to single-family owner occupied properties. “There are some signs that this spring buying session might be a little bit better than what we are forecasting,” he said. “There are some things out there that we see that make us think that this might be the time that people start coming back into the market in bigger numbers to buy owner-occupied homes than we were expecting.” [Read more]