Purchasing
- Your first home
- Your next home and move
- An investment property
- A vacation home
Refinancing
- To tap your home equity
- To save money
- To avoid rate increases
- To lower monthly payments
Home Equity
- Loans and lines of credit
- Finance major expenses
- Consolidate Debt
- Invest
Downtown Market Trend
Many people are leaving
their spacious homes in the suburbs
for smaller homes and apartments in
downtown, more cultural areas. Realty
Times columnist, Broderick Perkins,
emphasizes this point in his article,
“Lusk explains Housing Market
Shift.”
“Just as the housing market boom
left its mark on the economy and the
nation's way of life, the new real
estate market of flat and falling
sales and prices is reversing those
trends, often creating simpler, less
complicated lifestyles.”
The Lusk
Center for Real Estate, an economic
and real estate market research company,
located at the University of Southern
California, recently analyzed the current
real
estate market to explain the “underpinnings”
to the public.
There are four main findings that specifically
relate to California, but can also be
applied to the rest of the nation.
The most prevalent theme is that downtown
areas are in. They offer urban lifestyle
and more affordable houses because of
their density in proximity.
“Limited land supplies and stringent
entitlement requirements have always
pushed up prices in the Golden State.
Now, more expensive financing is making
it ever more difficult for builders
to profit from single-family homes.
In response, home builders have spun
off infill or urban housing divisions
to develop more homes downtown.”
Another contributing factor to the popularity
of downtown areas is the rise in gas
prices. Living downtown requires a lot
less commuting and saves on monthly
gas usage.
Relating to downtown living is that
people now want balconies as much as
they used to want large backyards. Trading
from a backyard to an upscale, urban
balcony is becoming as equivalent to
trading from a typewriter to a computer.
"The idea that the downtown renaissance
plays across income strata and age strata
is the idea that there is opportunity
for more affordable housing downtown
and the opportunity for upscale attached
housing. It's the mixing across cultures,
ages and income groups that makes for
some of the fun in downtown areas,’
Stuart Gabriel, director of the Lusk
Center said.
The current status of the housing market
and economy is leading to less spending.
As consumer spending slows, so will
the expensive housing market. "It's
slowing for a lot of reasons -- higher
gas prices, higher interest rates, house
prices stopped rising and compressed
home equity extraction,’ Gabriel
said.”
Apartment rentals have become accepted
by society and popular. “Apartment
rents increased 7 to 8 percent in 2005,
the first big jump in more than half
a decade, Lusk says. Even while some
home prices have flattened or fallen
they remain too expensive for many.”
This research could represent a number
of trends. Urban lifestyle, and tighter
budget are prevalent, but this could
also mean that suburban housing costs
could drop once people flee for the
city.