Stewart Hsu

I pulled the news excerpt below from the Real Estate Center Online Newsletter 11/16/07. Their website is http://recenter.tamu.edu/ and frankly, in my experience, it’s one of the best sources for real estate data that I’ve seen out there. I challenge you to find a website that is richer in content! =)  If you do, please post a comment for the benefit of your fellow readers.

From time to time, I may see a news clipping worth sharing, in which case I will post it on this blog. The idea is to share relevant pieces of news that may be helpful, not only now, but also many years from now. Have you ever wondered how accurate these economists predictions are in retrospect? The test of time will tell, and we’ll be able re-visit these posts to see how things turned out.

“LAS VEGAS (Dallas Morning News) – The National Association of Realtors’ chief economist earlier this week said that while much of middle America should avoid the worst of the housing slump, the thriving commercial real estate market could be headed for a slowdown.

Nationwide home prices are down almost 2 percent this year, but many areas of the country, including North Texas, are holding up well, Lawrence Yun told thousands of the country’s real estate agents at the industry’s conference in Las Vegas.

“Many local markets have not experienced price declines — places like Utah and many cities in Texas,” Yun said, adding that many housing markets “from the Rocky Mountain states to Appalachia” have undervalued home prices and won’t be clobbered by dramatic price declines.

“In Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas, for instance, we are seeing double-digit price appreciation,” he said.

Meanwhile, Yun said leading indicators for the commercial property market are cooling as the U.S. economy loses steam.

“The economy is expanding, but not as strongly as before,” he said. “Some economists are actually forecasting for economic recession.”

A report released Wednesday by the MIT Center for Real Estate suggests that the commercial property market may already be in transition. Commercial real estate prices in the third quarter decreased by 2.5 percent, their first drop in four years.

“The fall in our index is the first solid, quantitative evidence that the subprime mortgage debacle, which hit the broader capital markets in August, may be spreading to the commercial property markets,” said David Geltner, director of the MIT Center.”