UCLA Report Predicts Continued Weakness in Real Estate Market, Local Realtors Say Otherwise
March 15, 2019, 2:56 pm
By Donna Balancia
Demand for housing in California is weak and new housing construction is expected to slow throughout the state, including in Pasadena, in 2019 and 2020, according to a new economic study by UCLA. But local Realtors say the outlook remains sunny for existing home sales in the Pasadena area.
In his latest quarterly report released on Wednesday, UCLA Anderson School of Management Forecast director Jerry Nickelsburg led a group of economists who downgraded their forecast of the state’s real estate market.
The Anderson Forecast concluded new housing starts will slow this year and the national economy will shrink “to a near-recession pace of 1.1 percent in 2020” before increasing again in mid-2021.
But the number of housing starts, which represents new construction, hardly depicts the entire market, local real estate sources said.
“First, the forecasting is basically about new construction versus the resale market,” said George Penner, chief executive officer of Deasy Penner Podley. “New construction is a very small percentage of the market in Pasadena. The report did say home sales were down a touch in January, and a lot of that had to do with heavy rain and the federal shutdown.”
“That put a lot of people on the sidelines,” Penner said. “Rain keeps sellers from putting their homes on the market.”
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