Image by Barry Hardman
By Logan Mohtashami | HousingWire
Painter Kenneth Noland said, “Context is key – from that comes the understanding of everything.” Whether that is true in the world of art I could not tell you, but it is most certainly true in the world of economics. What are numbers but meaningless points? It is when those points are considered in the context of what has happened before and what we expect to happen in the future that they become imbued with meaning. With that in mind, I would like to revisit my 2020 thoughts on the U.S. housing market and compare those to where we are today — in the middle of one of the most epic years in our country’s history, due to COVID-19.
No doubt about it, the COVID crisis has taken some juice out of the 2020 housing market. The February housing data, pre-COVID, was juicy indeed. For the first time since the early part of the century, housing was the sector outperforming in the economy rather than a lackluster underperforming sector. If the February trend continued, total existing home sales would have been higher: we probably would have ended the year with sales between 5,7100,000 and 5,8400,000, a noticeable jump from last year’s number of roughly 5.3 million.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Even with today’s 6 million existing home sales print, we are down 3.2% compared to 2019 levels.
