Housing Shortage 2011?

According to an article posted on MSN.com, an economist is claiming that by the year 2011, there won’t be enough houses for America’s population unless new ones are built. With this bad economy, the focus has definitely been about the abundance of housing for sale and the number of foreclosures in the U.S., but a Chief Economist at First Trust Advisors is saying that we might have bigger problems.

The article on MSN online quotes him saying that we need one and a half million houses a year just to keep up with the population growth in America. He continues to say that if we think about disasters like fire and tear-downs along with worn-out properties, we need 1.6 million or even more every year. The article continues to say that privately owned housing starts in DEC 2009 were at a seasonally adjusted rate of 557,000, 4% less than in the month before which was at 580,000. Housing completion on the other hand reached an annual rate of 768,000 in DEC 2009, which is down 11.2% from 865,000 completions in NOV and down 25.3% from the year before.

According to RealtyTrac, All My Sons of Jacksonville learnt that there were 315, 716 properties with foreclosure filings just last month. These include default notices, schedules auctions and bank repossessions. Compared to last year, that’s an increase of 15%. Of course, the foreclosures aren’t going to get much better because it’s still hard for people to get jobs. The unemployment rate is about 9.7% right now according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, homes are more affordable these days and many first-time homebuyers are taking advantage of the real estate market. The Jacksonville local movers had numerous first-time homebuyer residential moves in different areas including Orange Park, St. Johns and St. Augustine, Florida. You can see the excitement on people’s faces when they move into the first home they own. It’s a different feeling unlike when people move into rental apartments. All My Sons of Jacksonville is really grateful to be part of those experiences. Our Jacksonville moving specialists take very good care of these first-time homebuyers, take extra care of their belongings by quilt-pad wrapping a lot of the furniture, making sure the boxes are safe and secure on our moving trucks and giving the best moving service we can.

The Jacksonville movers understand moving day be a special day in people’s lives and also stressful, so we always try to make families feel at ease and confident that their personal and valuable things are take good care of.

As for the housing shortage, the article on MSN continues to debate the theory and offers both sides to the story. Time will tell.