The real estate crash that never seems to end appears to be getting even worse. Home prices continue to go down, the number of underwater mortgages is soaring and the number of foreclosures set an all-time record in 2010. The peak of the housing market was in 2005 and the sub-prime mortgage crisis erupted in 2008. Shouldn’t things be getting better by now? How many years is this real estate crash going to go on for? Home builders and those that work in the construction industry are deeply suffering because new home sales continue to hover around record lows. Mortgage professionals are having a really hard time because very few people are seeking home loans and many of those that are seeking loans cannot get approved. Real estate agents all over the country are pulling their hair out in frustration and large numbers of them have left the industry completely. The United States has never had such a prolonged real estate slump in the post-World War 2 era. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of indications that the real estate crash is going to get even worse.
The rapidly rising price of oil, the horrific crisis in Japan and instability in the Middle East all threaten to plunge the world into another major economic downturn. That is really bad news for the real estate industry. Already there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone in the United States and without good jobs American workers simply cannot buy homes.
Here are 27 amazing statistics on the real estate crash and its aftermath:
- 18 percent of all the homes in Florida are sitting vacant. That number is 63 percent larger that it was just 10 year ago
- Celia Chan of Moody’s Analytics projects that home prices in Florida are going to fall another 11 percent
- As at the end of 2010, 23.1 percent of all U.S. homeowners with a mortgage owed more on their homes than their homes were worth.
