How Rising Prices Could Boost Housing Demand in 2013 - Maybe...

The Wall Street Journal posted an article in their Developments blog outlining the fact that national home prices finally hit a bottom in 2012, and that next year will be the first time since 2006 where prices ended the previous year in positive territory. Optimism is taking hold in markets across the country, and the fact that more potential buyers finally have a sense of urgency (as noted in the WSJ post), resulted in the author being optimistic that more sellers may be encouraged to put their homes on the market in 2013.

That said, we may want to temper expectations of an increase in national inventory/sales given the fact that prices actually bottomed out in Northern Virginia in 2009, yet the sales pace didn't pick up until 2012. Let's take a quick look at the numbers below...

Projecting national trends based on local trends over the past few years is as shaky as trying to do the inverse - there are so many factors influencing sellers' and buyers' decision-making including the national/local media narrative, that as more national media stories emerge describing the pricing turnaround, it is quite possible that the national inventory will see a faster uptick in inventory based on rising prices than Northern Virginia experienced.