Local business leaders learned more about what trends they could see in the future.
The Real American Sunrise brought in local experts to talk about the job market, economics, banking, and real estate. The pandemic has thrown a curveball into all of those areas and most small businesses will have to wait to see what the next few months could bring. But as for residential home sales, it is moving fast and realtors say people will have to stay on your toes if you are looking to buy or sell.
“The biggest change has been the velocity of sales, that things are just moving faster,” says Tim Stanford, Superior Plus Realtors. “The perception might be that that means there are fewer homes selling and certainly if you're looking for one it seems like that. But it's actually the opposite, more homes are selling. That locally we've seen an increase year to date of 7.9% through September of home sales, the actual number of homes sold and with that an increase of the prices for those homes of 13.4%.”
Besides residential, Stanford says that the next 12 to 18 months will be a good time to buy commercial office space if you are looking to expand or move your business.
“I think that the transportation times will come back to things maybe not the recover completely but you won't have to wait 6 weeks to get something shipped by train from the West Coast,” adds Sawaya. “Maybe that will get back down, it used to be a week before the pandemic now it's about 6 weeks maybe that gets down to 2 weeks or something. Maybe the backlog at the ports, ships don't wait 10, 11, 12 days to unload maybe they wait 3 days or 4 days.”
Sawaya doesn’t see the current supply chain problems have as much of a harmful impact on manufacturing as it will the transportation and logistics industry.
