In the last decade, the real estate market has been on a roller coaster. One year the market seems to always increase and the next year the price is going in the opposite direction. In more recent years, the market for real estate is on the way up but what exactly is behind this housing recovery? After reading a time’s magazine article, The Great Housing Rebound of 2012: How the Fed Helped Sellers Beat the Odds, it gives us some very big clues as to what is behind the recent housing recovery. In this essay, I would be using one of the most powerful tools for analyzing basic economic data: the supply and demand curve. I will use this graph as the basis for my calculations and I will show you how various changes in supply and demand effect equilibrium …show more content…
Using a supply and demand graph, this information is revealed to us. When lenders become more generous with lending it leads to more prospective home buyers being able to purchase a home which results in an increase in demand for housing. The supply, in the short-term, remains unchanged. Over the long-term, rising home prices will eventually lead to more home builders building homes. An increase in demand results in an increase in equilibrium price (home prices increase) and an increase in equilibrium quantity (more homes sold). When demand increases we can measure the changes in consumer and producer surplus. According to graph 1, we can clearly see consumer surplus is ambiguous and producer surplus …show more content…
The Time’s article clearly points this out, “there is reason to be concerned that distressed home sales – like foreclosures and short sales – will hamper the housing recovery in 2013.” When someone forecloses or short sales their home it means they sell their home. Ultimately, foreclosures and short sales increase the supply of homes on the market. Using graph 3, we can see the impacts of an increase of supply on the housing market. An increase in supply results in equilibrium price declining and equilibrium quantity increasing. Demand, over the short-term, remains unchanged. However, according to the law of demand, as the price declines more buyers will be encouraged to buy a home which should happen over the long-term especially if the price continues to decline. In terms of consumer and producer surplus, the consumer surplus will increase and the producer surplus will remain ambiguous. After everything we have discussed, another interesting dynamic in the housing market is related to the elasticity of demand for housing. As we all know, if you don’t own a home then you will be renting an apartment. In the market for housing, apartments are a close substitute for home ownership. When you compare the two markets, one of the factors we can compare is the elasticity of demand for each type of housing. Elasticity of demand will affect how much the demand changes as the price rises or falls. Based on
Gentrification is defined as the process by which the wealthy or upper middle class uproot poorer individuals through the renovation and rebuilding of poor neighborhoods. Many long-term residents find themselves no longer able to afford to live in an area, where the rent and property values are increasing. Gentrification is a very controversial topic, revealing both the positive and negative aspects of the process. Some of the more desirable outcomes include reduced crime rate, increased economic activity, and the building of new infrastructures. However, it is debated whether the negatives overwhelm the positive. An increase in the number of evictions of low-income families, often racial minorities can lead to a decline of diversity
The housing market is very unique as unlike other goods and services, houses have permanence, it is a fixed location good causing the rules of supply and demand to be taken to new extremes. In the case of the Toronto housing market we can view in almost real time the role supply and demand play on he ever increasing house prices, additionally the fundamental economic issue of scarcity is made extremely apparent by the limited size of the city of Toronto.
area, and I felt it would be a good idea to gain the knowledge of the
After a generation of portfolio managers and investors profiting from decades of favorable returns on stocks, they believed the modern economy was impervious to major calamities (“Rethinking” 20). As inflation rates fell from record highs in the late 1970s and early 1980s to the record lows that they are today, interest rates followed, enabling Americans to borrow more money from lenders which, in turn, increased housing prices to all-time highs (“Rethinking” 21).
The housing crisis in America is a major problem plaguing the United States economy. Before a solution is formulated, one must consider the history of the market and the causes of the problem. And after a solution is formulated, one must present an idea for prevention of the problem for the future. Many people see similarities between the Great Depression in the late 1920s to the late 1930s. The Great Depression was caused by the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
The new millennium brought with it a housing boom which had reached an unsustainable level (Pollock, 2011). Housing prices grew rapidly, and Baker (2010) noted a rise in house prices of over 70% from 1995 to 2006. For example, he noted average home prices in Los Angeles rose more than $400,000 over the period of 1995 to 2006 and approximately $519,000 in San Francisco. Prices around the country increased substantially as well (Baker, 2010). To encourage homeownership, banks promoted creative financing options (i.e. adjustable rate, interest only,...
“The housing market will get worse before it gets better” –James Wilson. The collapse of the United States housing market in in 2008 was one of the most devastating moments for the world economy. The United Sates being arguably the most important and powerful nation in the world really brought everyone down with this event. Canada was very lucky, thanks to good planning and proper preventatives to avoid what happened to the United States. There were many precursor events that occurred that showed a distinct path that led to the collapse of the housing market. People were buying house way out of their range because of low interest rates, the banks seemingly easily giving out massive loans and banks betting against the housing market. There were
It can be argued that the economic hardships of the great recession began when interest rates were lowered by the Federal Reserve. This caused a bubble in the housing market. Housing prices plummeted, home prices plummeted, then thousands of borrowers could no longer afford to pay on their loans (Koba, 2011). The bubble forced banks to give out homes loans with unreasonably high risk rates. The response of the banks caused a decline in the amount of houses purchased and “a crisis involving mortgage loans and the financial securities built on them” (McConnell, 2012 p.479). The effect on the economy was catastrophic and caused a “pandemic” of foreclosures that effected tens of thousands home owners across the U.S. (Scaliger, 2013). The debt burden eventually became unsustainable and the U.S. crisis deepened as the long-term effect on bank loans would affect not only the housing market, but also the job market.
In economics, a recession occurs when there is a slowdown in the spending of goods and services in the market. A recession causes a drop in employment, GDP growth, investment, as well as societal well-being. All recessions are caused by a specific cause, but the Great Recession of 2007-2009 was caused by a crash in the housing market. This crash was triggered by a steep decline in housing prices. All of a sudden, people bought houses because there was an excessive amount of money in the economy and they thought the price of houses would only increase. (Amadeo, 2012). There was a financial frenzy as the growing desire for homes expanded. People held a lot of faith in the economy and began spending irrationally on houses that they couldn’t afford. This led to overvalued estate and unsustainable mortgage debt. (McConnell, Brue, Flynn, 2012).
dropped 10.9% causing the home market to suffer. Individuals who have subprime mortgagees to finance these less expensive homes are often times forced into foreclosure due to substantial rate changes. In affect, the economy faces acontinuing negative cycle of subprime delinquencies that result in tighter credit and lower home prices.17 A worsening of the American housing market will negatively affect the consumers confidence while at the same time worsening the American economy.18
In late 2005, the housing bubble burst, and housing began to decline in price. People who refinanced, particularly those who financed with variable interest rates, suddenly found their homes were valued at much less. The housing market became flooded with homes for sale, because the homeowners with variable rates and interest only loans could not continue to make their payments. Greenspan: The rise in the number of homes for sale caused further lowering of home values. Keep in mind that the main reason for the mortgage crisis is the high number of defaulted home loans, which triggered foreclosures and sell-offs.
To really be able to fix the housing market, we have to look at how it got so bad to begin with. Banks were giving loans out to people who couldn’t afford to repay them. That was, what I see, as the most detrimental situation regarding the housing market. Are the banks only to blame? Absolutely not. Those people who took those loans with little thought of repercussions also caused this mess. We shouldn’t be borrowing money so loosely and the banks should not have made it so easy.
The housing market crash was a response to a chain of businesses and people who believed that the old laws of banking were no longer important. Banks were no longer required to hold on to mortgages for 30 years which gave them the ability to sell off to other companies, without concern for the mortgage holders. David Harvey, a renowned geographer, warned us of this problem, stating that “labor markets and consumption function more as an outcome of search for financial solutions to the crisis-tendencies of capitalism, rather than the other way around. This would imply that the financial system has achieved a degree of autonomy from real production unprecedented in capitalism’s history, carrying capitalism into an era of equally unprecedented dangers” (Coe, Kelly, and Yeung, 2013)
Real estate agencies in Brisbane are dealt with on a daily basis. The focal point of this paper is to analyse firstly to what extent Brisbane real estate agencies match the characteristics of a perfectly competitive industry. Secondly it will examine the pros and cons of the industry in relation to welfare implications using producer and consumer surplus concepts. This paper will not state which market structure real estate agencies fall under, it is just to what extent the agencies fit into a perfectly competitive industry.
The market price of a good is determined by both the supply and demand for it. In the world today supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental principles that exists for economics and the backbone of a market economy. Supply is represented by how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good that producers are willing to supply for a certain demand price. What determines this interconnection is how much of a good or service is supplied to the market or otherwise known as the supply relationship or supply schedule which is graphically represented by the supply curve. In demand the schedule is depicted graphically as the demand curve which represents the amount of goods that buyers are willing and able to purchase at various prices, assuming all other non-price factors remain the same. The demand curve is almost always represented as downwards-sloping, meaning that as price decreases, consumers will buy more of the good. Just as the supply curves reflect marginal cost curves, demand curves can be described as marginal utility curves. The main determinants of individual demand are the price of the good, level of income, personal tastes, the population, government policies, the price of substitute goods, and the price of complementary goods.