Economist Robert Shiller believes that a vigorous housing recovery is not going to happen in the near future.
In an interview with CNBC, Shiller noted that the housing futures market for single-family homes was only ‘mildly optimistic,’ while the pre-Hurricane Sandy East Coast was only anticipating 3% growth per year through 2016.
‘If it goes up three percent a year that means that, in real terms, housing is just about flat,’ Shiller said. ‘It's not a recovery to write home about.’
Shiller added that any chance of a roaring recovery for housing was extremely unlikely.
‘My general idea is that we're not going into a nationwide boom and not many places will show booms in the next few years,’ he said.
Shiller also pointed out that the concept of housing as a national market is a relatively recent development.
‘Fifty years ago, hardly anyone thought of houses as investments, but now, people are focused on it like never before,’ Shiller said. ‘The funny thing about this recent experience is it became so nationwide. Housing markets aren't supposed to be correlated all over the country like that. It was a rare phenomenon.’