What is everyone searching for?

Recently there has been a ton of good news being reported in the real estate segment. Resale home sales were up huge...new home sales were up big too...every talking head is predicting the end of the housing slump. Not so fast. I have done some research regarding some little publicized web traffic statistics, and that tells us..The Rest Of The Story!

The company, Hitwise, a web-traffic analysis company, recently published the following trend chart:

What this chart reveals is that year-over-year visits to websites in the Real Estate category are down 22% for April 2010...that is 11 consecutive months of traffic decline for visits to Real Estate For Sale sites! It is painfuly obvious that buyer interest is declining. Now, lets look at another Hitwise chart:

The above chart from Hitwise reports that visits to “Home and Apt Rental” websites are up 45% in April 2010 year-over-year, and that represents the tenth consecutive month of increases!

Finally, Hitwise reports: “The most popular term ranked by the overall share of search clicks is ‘apartments for rent’, which has increased 162% for the 4 weeks ending May 8, 2010 when compared to the same time period 2 years ago.” For the Home and Apt Rental websites, visits have increased year-over-year for the past 10 months. 

Now, every real estate agent will tell you that 90% or more of all homebuyers use the Internet during the home purchase process... So, a 22% decline for traffic to real estate sites, combined with 45% increase for rentals suggests that the market demand for housing sales might be a whole lot softer, and headed in a different direction, than widely reported economic data indicates.

People will choose to rent for 2 main reasons...they can't buy a home or they don't want to buy a home.
A large number of people today who CAN'T buy fall into a two categories: 1) No job/job or income instability, 2) credit issues. Hopefully, the job situation will improve consistently going forward, but the number of people with credit issues will most likely continue to rise. Think about the statistic in this following chart: (look at the very left bar in the graph)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The state with the greatest percentage of people at least 30 days late on their mortgage is...FLORIDA! Over 1 out of every 4 people with a mortgage is 30 or more days behind.
 
It is common knowledge that missing mortgage payments will deliver a pretty significant hit to ones credit score. And with the abject failure of the Govt. HAMP (loan modification) program, it is a fairly safe bet that a large number of people currently behind on their mortgage will end up eventually either losing their home in a foreclosure action or successfully completing a short sale (the much better alternative). In either case, these folks will not be purchasing a homeduring the next 2 years, or more. These are ones who can't buy a home.
 
Then you have large segment who still believe that it is not a good time to buy..they are renters by choice, and their numbers are growing daily.
 
Now, I personally know that many investors are plowing money into the real estate market, although they are very selective and are making decisions that factor in NO appreciation for 5 or more years. And, there are still buyers out there. They are balancing the historically low interest rates, low home prices and reduced competition against the chance that home values will decline further. But most of my buyers today have a long enough time horizon to give them the confidence that the combo of interest rate and home prices makes it a good time to buy.
 
Any homeowners reading this who are considering moving in the next 24 months or so should seriously consider getting your home on the market sooner, rather than later. Sell, get you money in the bank now, and rent for a while if you need to. It may be a bit inconvenient, but it appears that this may be the smartest move.