At California Listings’ Power Players Real Estate Showcase, SoCal’s top local real estate agents weighed in on everything from marketing strategies to the importance of team cohesion. But the multi-million dollar question remains: where is this market headed?!
We asked Gina Michelle, Cindy Ambuehl, Jeff Anderson and Bryn Stroyke to look into their crystal balls and share where they believe the SoCal market is headed…
Cindy Ambuehl: I would love a nice healthy correction, but I don’t see it, at least for the westside. Nothing has slowed down. I’m not afraid to admit that we’re tired. We are hustling and we are trying so hard to accommodate our buyers who are really struggling to find a property when there’s no inventory. And it’s not slowing down. We have multiples on everything! If you don’t step up, you’re going to lose out because somebody else will. So it’s just very demanding right now and I don’t see any indications that it’s slowing down on the westside. I don’t see it slowing down much for the next couple of years.
Bryn Stroyke: We definitely have headwinds. There’s a prevailing influence that is overwhelming all of that, and that is the fact that they have pumped $7 trillion into the economy. There is so much money out there adding inflation pressure, that you’re going to see slower economic growth. But you are going to see upward pressure on assets. If you look at what happened in the late ’70s and early ’80s with inflationary pressure, real estate did very, very well. So I think the number of our transactions will slow down, but the prices will continue to go up. But it’s a challenging time to be in real estate. We’re going into a time when agents are going to have to work really work hard.
Gina Michelle: I always say that my crystal ball is broken. I really thought in 2019 that we may have topped out, but now we’re in 2022 and busier than ever. But I believe that we are going to come to a more moderate pace. The pace we’ve all been running at for the last two years is absolutely insane. It’s not sustainable. And while I do see demand slowing down, I don’t see the market itself correcting in terms of a large correction. What I see is a more moderate pace. We’re still seeing more moderate offers where we may have had 20, now we see 8-9. I foresee the next six months being of a similar pace. We’re sill going to see high demand, interest rates are still competitive. There’s a lot of money out there and people need to live somewhere, so that demand is going to continue, hopefully at a more healthy pace.
Jeff Anderson: After the pandemic started, I couldn’t tell you what happened or where we were headed. The last two years have been mind boggling, so it’s really hard to predict what could happen. But demand is so high and I believe will continue to be high because of the lack of inventory. I think it’s still a good market, and I’m looking forward to a little more balance.