Happy New Year: 2020 Real Estate Outlook

Well here we are again in the US another presidential election cycle... yay... you feel the lack of enthusiasm? I will not venture into politics here but I will encourage everyone of legal voting age to vote. So presidential election years often lead to flat economic conditions. It seems the closer we get to the election the more reservations in the financial markets. This has stood the test of time immemorial. This is not to say that recessions result, rather quite the contrary, things tend to stay in the status quo. So the 2020 economic outlook is more or less the same which has been fairly strong of late.

Residential real estate however is a notable exception. Most residential real estate is individuals buying or selling their own private property. They are impacted by supply and demand as well as capital markets such as mortgage banking and construction finance, but residential buyers and sellers decisions are based on their personal needs and situation at that moment in time, elections be damned.

The outlook for real estate in SW Washington remains positive with 2020 quite likely to continue this trend of near neutral market conditions and modest year over year price growth. Sales volume has been rather brisk over the last 12 months almost as if the market were favoring sellers, yet the market favors neither sellers or buyers in a broad sense. Individual macro markets are all over the board with high end properties facing more buyer resistance and entry level properties still firmly in favor of sellers.

The trend over the last several months has been running between 650-750 closed transactions every month in Clark County, which is rather healthy. I think we may see a slow down in overall new construction in the single family homes market, but a continued build up of urban properties like apartment towers and condo towers downtown and on the urban corridors.

Expect interest rates to be relatively flat and sales to continue at a brisk pace. 2020 ought to be a strong year in real estate that should be positive for both buyers and sellers.

Happy New Year!