Oct 03 2008
Pittsburgh Housing Market Update - October 2008
The statistics are in for the Pittsburgh housing market for the month of September. Once again, these stats were taken from the West Penn MultiList and reflect sales for single-family homes only.
As you will see from the numbers, nothing too earth shaking occurred during the month of September, compared to last year.
Sales volumes remain down for most areas but the changes are not significant. Average sale price in general is holding steady, with some areas slightly down and a few slightly up.
For this month I added a new stat - average days on market for sales closing during the month of September. This number has risen slightly in most areas but not significantly so.
So, the magic question once again - what is the housing market outlook for the Pittsburgh area for the next 12 months?
Honestly, I have no idea.
What seems to be clear is that (as I’ve mentioned before) Pittsburgh didn’t have a "housing bubble" like many other areas in the country. Thus, no wild numbers to report.
On the other hand, we do not live in a vacuum.
Apparently, we’re going to get some relief from the government in the form of the controversial "bailout," which the President signed just a few hours ago.
There are also other relief programs that are already in place - one of which, the Hope for Homeowner’s Act of 2008, I will be discussing in an upcoming blog.
All this may help in the short term. However, the area of continuing concern is the fact that the federal government is now more than $10 trillion in debt. And the government continues to monetize that debt by printing more money to pay for more things. As more money is injected into the system, the value of the dollar will continue to fall.
That is, and should rightly be, our real long-term economic concern.
It’s a shame that almost no one is talking about it - certainly not the Presidential or Vice Presidential candidates.
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