Winmo

More Evidence: Is the Real Estate Market Softening?

The real estate market shows signs of softening as evidenced by a 17% increase in inventory coupled with a 7% drop in average sale prices in NYC, a 5.3% year-over-year decline in US housing starts, a nearly 6% reduction in advertising in construction trade journals, and significant layoffs announced by Caterpillar affecting thousands of US jobs.

Following up on my recent blog post, Is NYC’s Real Estate Bubble Cracking?, where we uncovered the decrease in real estate advertisers, I found more revealing evidence about the current state of the real estate market.

If advertising is declining for residential real estate, can we really infer there is softness in the market? After all, perhaps less advertising means there is simply less supply for sale. Here’s some more evidence that continues to suggest there is softness:

  1. 1.If there was less supply, prices for property would be increasing. But this is not the case. According to Corcoran, one of New York’s largest real estate firms, inventory is up 17% while average sale price is down 7%.*
  2. 2.US Housing starts are down 5.3% year-over-year in April 2016, the most recent month available from the US Department of Housing and Development.
  3. 3.Advertising in B2B construction trade journals is down. Trade journals range from Construction Equipment, Pavement Maintenance And Reconstruction, to Concrete Contractor. Both online and print advertising have contracted by almost 6%. Almost every media property in the market is down.
  4. 4.Caterpillar announced layoffs of 4000-5000 positions, all full-time by the end of 2016. Most of the impact they say is expected in their US operation.

[*] The Corcoran Report, Manhattan Monthly Market Snapshot, April 2016

Related