Are we in a Buyer’s or Seller’s Market? Outstanding post and comments at Matrix. What if it’s not “either – or” and just a balanced market? From the comments:

All in all, we are much closer to a buyers market than you think and it happened so fast because of the runup in housing prices over the past 2 years. It was simply unsustainable as low lending rates were not going to be around forever; and now wer are seeing effects of higher borrowing costs on buyers. If the fed raises again in June, and assuming we still have 8-12 months of trickling higher lending rates, expect a full blow buyers market (with all new dev inventory coming to market over next 1-2 years) by summer of 2007!

While all real estate markets are decidedly local, the above could easily have been written with the CharlAlbemarle market in mind. Thanks to UrbanDigs for the comment.

There is far more inventory now in our market than there has been for some time, Construction is Down, and prices are up. While my livelihood is based on the buying and selling of real estate, this is a cogent argument for renting in some occasions. Hat Tip to Inman for pointing out this story.

Local data analysis coming soon …

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