While the pandemic created huge, damaging ripples across the economic landscape locally and worldwide, it has had surprisingly little effect on the local real estate market, say some Pasadena realtors.
One local realtor even described the market as being “as overheated” as he has ever seen.
A number of Pasadena realtors interviewed this week — while reluctant to make predictions about the immediate impacts of the County’s suddenly improving pandemic conditions — were optimistic that current low interest rates would hold and continue real estate’s current strength, possibly even moreso with a quickly rising economy.
“We have no way of predicting where the market will go,” said Pasadena Foothill Association of Realtors (PFAR) President Barry Storch said this week in an email interview. “We do know that while interest rates remain historically low, buyers will continue their quest for homeownership.”
Pressed for his outlook on the coming year, Storch offered that “California Association of Realtors economists predict that low interest rates will hold thru the end of this year which gives buyers that extra buying power position, and then again, it’s all based on inventory, which is in the seller’s hands.”
Pasadena realtor Todd Hays told Pasadena Now Wednesday that, “We have had a crazy busy last six months in real estate in Pasadena in spite of COVID. In spite of not having open houses, in spite of not being able to conduct business the way we did about a year ago.”
According to Hays, the pandemic hasn’t necessarily negatively impacted local real estate, and if anything, the opposite is true.
“Anyone who has been following local real estate knows that the market is on fire and has been for some time,” he said.
As Hayes elaborated, “Other than COVID making things a little bit more challenging, the market has continued to pick up pace and grow exponentially. The fact that interest rates are now close to three (rising from 2 ½ percent) will have a bigger impact than COVID, and will not be offset by the city opening back up.”
Realtor Bill Podley has the same overall perspective on the City’s reopening, and any possible effect on local real estate.
Podley told Pasadena Now this week, “The residential real estate is as overheated as I’ve ever seen it in my 47 year career. There are so many buyers wanting to buy because interest rates continue to be very low, around the 3% range, give or take an eighth or a quarter of a point.”
But Podley pointed out that there are far more buyers in the market than the inventory can support.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Podley, who explained, “There are simply not enough houses for sale because there are too many sellers who might want to sell, but don’t know what they’re going to be able to move into, because there are so few houses to sell. It’s a vicious cycle.”
Realtor Hays points to one aspect of reopening, however, that might have a larger impact on how houses are sold in the overheated market.
“I think what’s going to have a greater potential effect on real estate is our ability to conduct business as before,” he elaborated. “Open houses and things like that. With just the city opening, and with nothing else changing in real estate, I don’t anticipate (reopening) having a dramatic impact.”
“However,” Hayes continued, if we’re soon able to go back to having what was that traditional open house and there’s greater perception in the eyes of the public that it’s back to normal, that may have an impact because then what’s going to happen is you’re going to have all these signs on street corners and signs in front of houses, and people are going to be welcomed back into homes and things like that. And right now we aren’t sure when that’s going to happen.”
