OC Register, Jeff Collins January 13th, 2012
A former housing market skeptic has become a housing market booster, telling a gathering of real estate insiders Thursday that now is “a great time to buy a home.” Chris Thornberg, a former UCLA economist and a founding principal of Beacon Economics, once derided the National Association of Realtors and other housing industry bulls for saying that same thing back when the economy was overheated.
Thornberg told the Orange County Register that buying a home was folly in 2007, soon after the Realtor association launched an ad campaign telling Americans back then it was a good time to buy or sell a home. “What’s the point of buying today when you can buy it for 10 percent less in a year?” Thornberg said at the time. “For the life of me, I can’t figure out that logic.” Most who did buy back then lost their shirt.
Fast forward four years, and you hear Thornberg saying this at the Voit Real Estate Services’ commercial real estate forecast in Newport Beach: “If you’ve been thinking about buying a condo in Vegas or buying a condo in Miami, buy now.” But don’t expect prices to bounce back next year, he warned. Or the year after that. “It is definitely a long-term hold,” he said.
It’s a dramatic turnaround for the man who began using the Bubble word years before the housing industry and even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged the existence of a housing bubble. Thornberg’s forecasts have been increasingly optimistic over the past two years ago. But Thursday, Thornberg said, “I’m probably the most optimistic than I’ve been about the economy in the last eight years.”
