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Analyst Predicts The U.S. Housing Market Will Collapse Again

Analyst Predicts The U.S. Housing Market Will Collapse Again

housing market
An analyst predicts the housing market will collapse again. Prices have been rising faster than inflation, wages and rent. A correction is inevitable.

U.S. housing prices have been rising much faster than overall inflation, wages and rent — exactly what happened leading up to the last housing bubble of 2007-2008. A correction is inevitable, writes economic analyst Jesse Colombo.

Colombo predicts that the U.S. Housing Bubble 2.0 is at risk of bursting in the recession we are in, thanks in part to aggressive monetary policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

“U.S. Housing Bubble 2.0 formed as a result of the Fed’s extremely stimulative monetary policies in the past decade – namely zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and quantitative easing (QE),” Colombo wrote in a column for Forbes.

Many U.S. homeowners worry about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on housing prices. The 2020 stock market crash has exacerbated those fears, according to The Balance.

The National Association of Realtors surveyed its members this month, The Balance reported. Respondents said that 63 percent expect lower prices. About 90 percent said the pandemic has reduced homebuyer interest and about 60 percent of those said buyers are simply delaying their purchase for a couple of months.

Analyst Colombo said he believes that the U.S. economy was already heading for a recession. The coronavirus pandemic acted like a pin that burst it, along with other bubbles he warned about.

The current housing bubble isn’t identical to the last one, Colombo said: “History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes…lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, etc.”

This time, for example, he said many Airbnb “super-hosts” who bought properties with cheap mortgages in order to rent out are now over-leveraged and in extreme jeopardy due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The uncertainty of the pandemic has made it difficult for prospective home buyers to view houses that are for sale.

“Forget the recession,” Colombo said. Job losses could total 47 million and the unemployment rate could hit 32 percent — “truly depression figures.”

One of the signs of a housing market crash is changes to the tax code, according to The Balance.

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“The housing market responds dramatically when Congress changes the tax code,” Kimberley Amadeo wrote for The Balance. “Trump’s tax reform plan could be having a negative impact on housing. The plan raised the standard deduction, so many Americans no longer need to itemize. As a result, they can’t take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction. The real estate industry opposed the tax plan.”

Housing prices have risen by 59 percent since their bottom in 2012, according to the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index.

Colombo said he’s concerned that “the frothy U.S. housing market will be forced to come back to planet earth very soon, which will drag the overall economy down even more.”