“A lot is going wrong” with the housing market right now, but “uncertainty” is the “biggest” problem of all, “Shark Tank” investor Barbara Corcoran told Fox News on Thursday.
“There’s great uncertainty, and uncertainty is bad for business,” the Corcoran Group matriarch said while appearing on “America’s Newsroom.”
“Uncertainty makes people pause, which is a problem. The suppliers of homes in America, with seven million homes short, are now hoarding lumber because they’re afraid of the tariffs. A lot is going wrong, but the biggest tenant that’s going wrong is, people are uncertain. They don’t know what to expect next, and uncertain people don’t move forward.”
A cocktail of issues has created a hostile market for prospective homebuyers – including lack of supply to meet demand, high prices and stagnant wages on top of uncertainty.
New data, however, shows a glimmer of hope in some regards as home costs rose 4.2% from a year ago on an unadjusted basis, the slowest monthly increase since December 2021.
Still, the real estate mogul says many Americans won’t see much relief from the change.
“They’re still going up. A lot of people are excited about the housing prices slowing down, but it’s less than a quarter percent, and that doesn’t provide a lot of relief for people,” she said.
“What the real problem is, is an interest rate that’s holding people back, of course. But more than two-thirds of Americans have 4% interest rates. Why would you sell your house? Why would you move? You have [a] 4% rate. That’s really the blanket holding,” she added.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
