I believe that one day the housing market will recover but I am not of the belief that it will be like it was in say 2005 and 2006. It wasn't sustainable and there were some affordability issues. Real estate values went up too high too fast. Easy to write now as I look back but at the time it didn't seem like the party would end.
As the housing market recovers it will look more like it did at the beginning of the decade than it did when both home values and home prices peaked in the middle of the decade. I could be wring though we may go back into the 1990's but I could be right, time will tell. I made a couple of charts that show the number of homes sold each January during the last ten years and the total dollar volume of the homes sold. I used data from out most excellent MLS which is not guaranteed but deemed reliable. The numbers cover homes sold in the St. Paul city limits. Residential type housing condos, townhouses and single family dwellings.
I made the charts because January home sales seemed a bit slow. It was better than in 2007, 2008 and 2009 and not much worse than the best years when looking at the total number of sales. Looking at the dollar value of those homes sold is a bit more dramatic, but prices are kind of ten years ago across the board, or maybe 1998ish.
