With so much uncertainty 🤷♂️ surrounding the housing 🏠 market, many Americans may be afraid that buying or selling a house is too risky 🤨 of a move to make. A recession isn’t great news 📰 for buyers, especially with the average family 👨👩👧👦 unable to afford a home in many parts of the country as it is. Prospective homebuyers are also concerned about their ability to make mortgage 🏦 payments.
After a tumultuous and tragic 2020, we enter the new year 🎆 with guarded 💂♀️ optimism as the world continues to battle ⚔️ the coronavirus pandemic. How countries heal 🤕 from the crisis is crucial to struggling economies 📉 and the endurance of surprisingly strong 💪 real estate markets.
2020 was a tough year, but there was a silver 🥈 lining: With so much time ⏰ spent inside, people had a chance to really focus 🧘 on their homes and make them as functional, comfortable 🛋, and beautiful as can be. So it’s a good thing we have so many great real estate reality shows 📺 on HGTV, Netflix, Bravo, and beyond to keep us not only entertained, but also inspired with tips to take our living spaces to the next level ⏫.
As with every other aspect of American 🇺🇸 life in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic dominated the real estate industry this year — wreaking havoc 🤬 on markets, shattering our ingrained routines and traditions at home, changing the way we move around, and leaving us with an uneasy awareness 😬 that 2021 may be equally unpredictable 🔮.
For real estate, as for many things, 2020 was a strange 🧿 year. Despite a pandemic 🧫, a recession and unemployment that at one time hit 20 million, 6 million homes 🏘 were sold 💰 and the average home price was up ⤴️ 5 percent. There were record low 👇 mortgage rates of course, but there's also the fact is that the recession 🏚 has mainly been concentrated among people with lower-paid jobs - people who rent.