American housing market: Key indicators of the 2013 real estate market

doctorhousingbubble.com / By Dr. Housing Bubble / April 13th, 2013
The US housing market is massive.  You would expect this from a nation of 315,000,000+ people spanning over 50 states.  So it is important to understand the various dynamics occurring over many states.  In regards to single family home buyers, in most of the United States home prices are very reasonable.  This is hard for some in the coastal regions to digest or even comprehend.  When you look at certain markets in high priced areas, many people have a hard time penciling out the financial details.  Yet with such a large number of investors purchasing with cash, a new market has been created.  But if we are to take the US market and make a wide-eyed observation, we will find some good, bad, and ugly aspects of the current housing market.  Whereas in 2008 through 2010, the market was dominated by the bad, ugly, and grotesque.  What can we say about the current US housing market?
The Good
One good aspect of the market is overall, affordability is back in line to historical trends:

Price-to-rent ratios are back in line in many parts of the country.  In fact, this is the big push from the all cash buyers in places like Arizona, Nevada, and Florida.  The one thing I would be cautious about is in places like Arizona, you have over 50 percent of buyers coming from the investment bunch and when you look at rental prices, they are weak and vacancies are very common.  But with such a high number of investors buying, you basically have investors selling to other investors thinking they will produce higher yields.  However, for non-investors in most US markets prices are now affordable thanks to the big drop in prices but also the Fed’s tantalizingly low interest rates.  Sure, the Fed’s balance sheet is well over $3 trillion but that is an issue for another day.
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