Tulsa Real Estate Market Update
The best news I can share today is that we are seeing the first signs of a recovering local Real Estate market. 2006 was our peak year in the Tulsa, OK area with the highest number of sales. That year we sold about 16,000 homes in our market. Since then we declined for the next four years to a low of under 10,000 home sales in 2010. 2011 was basically flat with values declining. In 2012 we finished off the year with over 12000 home sales. Not only that, our values seem to have stabilized and the move up buyers are coming back into the market and buying the higher price ranges that have been beat up so badly over the last few years.
So, people are asking me what this means for the sellers. From my perspective, I think this is the best time to sell in the last few years. The 2010 tax credit of $8000 got a lot of buyers off the fence. Since that time buyers have been much more hesitant and the experienced investors came into our market with a vengeance. The “move up buyer” was replaced by the “best deal buyer”. For 2013, the economists are projecting a slow recovery in general with a local appreciation of 2-3%. They also hope that will continue over the next several years which will result in a slow, steady, healthy recovery for our local market.
Last but not least, the interest rates are a significant driving force behind the recovery. As long as they stay low and the lenders continue to lend money and don’t get too extreme with the regulations, we should be fine. We expect to see a slight increase in rates to approximately 4.4% by the 4th quarter of 2013.
Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for letting me share.
Paul Wheeler
