Daily Archives: January 2, 2010

It was recently reported that national consumer confidence ended the year 2009 on a stronger footing compared to pre-recession levels, despite the fact numbers coming down slightly in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter.

According to the Conference Board of Canada’s index of consumer confidence, it shows that confidence has eased slightly in the fourth quarter for the first time in three quarterly periods.

With the decrease in confidence, it reflects the weakening sentiment about making major purchases.

This sentiment about major purchases would include purchases such as cars, and of course homes.

The balance of sentiment about making the major purchases has dipped slightly into negative territory in the fourth quarter.

This indicator is an important factor underlying the housing market.

Now with consumer confidence going down the prospects for the housing market for 2010 might look somewhat grim, however if you take into account the fact that there will be low rates being kept around until the middle of 2010, maybe even longer and that more sellers putting their homes on the market, it stands a chance to attract buyers.

With us heading further into the time we were in the recession a year ago, the performance will be significantly better, however we might not be seeing any large increase as we have seen in the past few months.

The reason for this is the fact that with more inventory on the market, we will not be seeing many bidding wars as buyers will have more inventory to look at.

The fact remains that the market will do much better than what was seen in the beginning of 2009.

We should be seeing the housing market levels peak soon, and settle at a decent level. By this I mean the market will be neither a buyer’s or seller’s market, however, in time as the economy does get better then market will slowly turn into a seller’s market and we will begin to see the records seen in 2007 when the housing market was extremely good.

For buyer’s still looking for their dream house, it will only be a few weeks before you will begin to see many homes on the market, therefore if you are not satisfied with what you see now, waiting a bit will not hurt. However, at the same time, you might face the problem of having too much to choose from, however that is a problem for another day.