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America having housing crisis, Realtor president says

America having housing crisis, Realtor president says

America is in a housing crisis, Elizabeth Monarch, Kentucky Realtors president, told the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce’s Rooster Booster Breakfast on Thursday at the Owensboro Convention Center.

Politico recently wrote, “Studies have shown that for the past 40 years, housing supply has not kept pace with demand, resulting in a housing shortage ranging between 2 million and 6 million homes.”

In Owensboro, only 90 building permits were issued for new single-family homes in the first six months of this year — one of the lowest home starts in decades.

Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, told Forbes magazine this month, “I expect the number of homes for sale to decline this year and continue to be a damper on home sales. Limited inventory is also keeping prices high, even though housing affordability has deteriorated significantly in the past three years.”

Monarch, who has sold more than 3,200 homes in the past 21 years, said the median price of a home sold in Kentucky so far this year is $255,000.

That’s up $5,000 from last year and $30,000 since 2021, she said.

Monarch said Kentucky Realtors is working on a plan to ask the Kentucky General Assembly to allow first-time homebuyers to create a tax-free savings account to help them buy a home.

The University of Kentucky, she said, is working on a study on how that could work.

Monarch said some brokerages are asking people to sign a 40-year listing agreement that says if they sell the home in the next 40 years and don’t use that brokerage, they would owe the brokerage between $3,000 and $5,000.

She said there have been two cases of that in Lexington.

And, “It’s rampant in Florida,” Monarch said.

She said Kentucky Realtors want the General Assembly to stop that from happening and protect buyers.

Monarch, a Cloverport native, is the 100th state president of Kentucky Realtors and is the principal broker for eXp Realty in Kentucky, managing more than 580 Realtors.

She is also a member of the Kentucky Auctioneers Association and the National Auctioneers Association.

By Keith Lawrence Messenger-Inquirer