Posted by Kromey at 12:37pm Feb 22 '10that the very same forces you're talking about here are exactly the ones the free-marketers have been saying all along would bring us out of the recession, but nevermind - that's a discussion for the Politics board.
Yes, I do think there is pent-up demand, and I do think that the housing market will see a small boom as consumer confidence returns and people who have been wait-and-seeing will finally crawl out and buy the house they've been eying throughout this whole ordeal. I think as a result the currently-deflated housing prices will see a brief spike before settling back down on "normal" values; we'll see a similar pattern in home-building, although that sector is typically less prone to fluctuations so we'll see it be less pronounced, although perhaps a bit longer-lived.
Should this come to fruition, it absolutely would be a healthy thing for our economy - right now there's lots of people simply hoarding every penny they can because Fox News and CNN keep shouting "Recession!", and that's not what a viable economy is made of. As they slowly return to their normal spending habits (although hopefully with a little more restraint and less spending into debt, however the Credit CARD Act will likely diminish or even eliminate any such change we might have otherwise seen), the economy will similarly return to its normal operations, and we'll be back where we were.
Yes, I do think there is pent-up demand, and I do think that the housing market will see a small boom as consumer confidence returns and people who have been wait-and-seeing will finally crawl out and buy the house they've been eying throughout this whole ordeal. I think as a result the currently-deflated housing prices will see a brief spike before settling back down on "normal" values; we'll see a similar pattern in home-building, although that sector is typically less prone to fluctuations so we'll see it be less pronounced, although perhaps a bit longer-lived.
Should this come to fruition, it absolutely would be a healthy thing for our economy - right now there's lots of people simply hoarding every penny they can because Fox News and CNN keep shouting "Recession!", and that's not what a viable economy is made of. As they slowly return to their normal spending habits (although hopefully with a little more restraint and less spending into debt, however the Credit CARD Act will likely diminish or even eliminate any such change we might have otherwise seen), the economy will similarly return to its normal operations, and we'll be back where we were.
I find it a bit ironic - Kromey