As I mentioned a few weeks back, I am not exactly at peace with our current real estate market on the Cape. It does not seem real to me: It’s part of some crazy dream that we are living through.
I’m not alone in this. My apprehensions are part of a strain of skepticism that is not uncommon. Here are a few articles and videos that I think are quite relevant. The first is from Ken McElroy, the successful real estate investor.
From a few weeks ago, this article by — I thought perfectly mirrored my own emotions over this problem. The housing market is roaring. Here are the worries that reveals – by Megan McArdle
The Cape’s Booming Housing Market: By the Numbers
The actual numbers, despite my worries, are astounding here on Cape Cod. These statistics listed below are single-family homes for August 2020 compared with August of 2019 and come from the Cape Cod & The Islands Association of Realtors
- Median Sales Price: Up 26.6% ($430K to $545K)
- Pending Sales: Up 71%
- Inventory: Down 51.4%
- Inventory: Down 57.4%
This phenomenon is part of a national trend that has hoards of people leaving the city for the country. That is the positive side of this earth moving event. There has to be a negative side to all of this and that is what Megan details brilliantly in her article. It is backed up by my own experience. I see this in my own real estate business. I’m getting a lot more calls from buyers looking at properties over $750,000.00 than I am from buyers looking for smaller, more affordable homes. Part of that is dues to the fact that there are very few homes on the market for under $400,000.00.
This is besides the fact that I have clients that have lost their businesses or all of their investment savings with the pandemic. Their plans have been delayed or canceled all together and when they do come back, I’m not sure that there will be anything that they can afford anyway.
The other monster in the corner that everyone seems to be ignoring is what is going to happen to all of those people on Cape Cod that have lost their jobs, their savings, their businesses, or their tenants? How will these people be able to continue here? The federal help that kept a lot of families afloat cannot last forever and we have not dealt with the fallout of these events.
I, for one, do not see how we don’t end up with a massive number of foreclosures, lost jobs, lost businesses, and broken dreams, even here on Cape Cod. We’re not all upper-middle-class professionals here. All of us don’t own second homes, have vast sums of money stashed away for our retirement, or are happily singing on our way to the bank.
All of this makes me feel like a character in a melodrama running around warning everyone that “Winter is Coming! The problem is that everyone is too busy raking in the money to listen to me.
Arrow Down Thrills Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash