10/07/2026
The elephant in the room with Real Estate currently is the question of, "is the market going to crash?"
I know a lot of buyers waiting in the wings for prices to come down would LOVE a market crash! Getting into a home that is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars less than ticket price is everyone's goal.. right?
After the 2008 Market Crash, the circumstances following it were devastating. frozen credit market meaning your local businesses couldn't secure short term loans to pay for inventory or employees, massive unemployment due to businesses cutting costs and of course a huge foreclosure wave for millions of families that unfortunately lost their home.
Today, it still affects the housing market. Pre-2008 crash there was actually an oversupply of homes due to constructing more homes than what was in demand. Post-2008 crash... because the homebuilding side of Real Estate was destroyed, it caused builders to go bankrupt and entered us into a long decade of underbuilding new homes.
Nowadays there are stricter lending practices in place, to prevent another huge wave of foreclosures. You can now lock-in your rate, and have the flexibility of refinancing for an even better rate in the future! Those who bought when rates were 3-5% are cozily sitting in their homes, despite outgrowing it for their needs.
Absorption rate (housing supply) sat at around 13+ months worth of inventory during the 2008 crash.
Right now in Pennsylvania, absorption rate is sitting at around 3-4 months worth of inventory. Union County is at 2.7 months worth of inventory. That means we are returning to a more balanced market, from a heavy seller's market. You as the buyer have more negotiation room and the seller has less chances of a multi-offer-situation.
Despite 7% interest rates on top of the cost of buying a house nowadays, lenders have so many great programs for first-time-homebuyers. 0-3% down, and closing cost assistance makes that dream a little bit more of a reality!
Moral of the story? The market is far from crashing. There are protections in place to make sure we don't go through that devastation again.
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