Half of the Oklahoma population believes that housing industry in the state is slowly going down, though there has been consistent increase in home prices since 2002.
According to Oklahoma Association of Realtors, around 50% of Oklahomans surveyed last year believes that real estate market in the state is in poor condition. This is despite a consistent increase in average sales price of homes across the state from $116,298 in 2002 to $149,758 in 2007, as reported by Tradingmarkets.
The association also highlighted that 52,170 homes were sold statewide in 2007, which was 3.16% less as compared to 2006. The probable reason for decline is less confidence of Oklahomans in the state’s economy and real estate industry. Moreover, declining home prices in many cities across the country are creating uncertainty among Oklahomans about real estate industry in the state.
Another reason for slump in home sales is the rising number of illegal immigrants leaving the state. The impact is quite huge - around $786 Million annually if 25,000 illegal immigrants left and $3 Billion annually if 90,000 people migrate. These illegal immigrants are causing heavy losses to the Oklahoman housing market; as a result, a large part of state’s economy is going vain.
Moreover, owing to immigration of skilled workers from the state, sectors like construction are facing the problem of lack of workers. When a skilled migrant or non-native labor left the job market, subsequently the wages for local and native workers shoot up. Hence, the construction of new homes is becoming costlier and is negatively affecting the state’s housing market.
Besides, escalating interest rates in the housing market of Oklahoma are driving away the potential buyers from buying new homes because it increases the prices of new homes and shatter the confidence of new buyer. Also, security interest or mechanic lien given by homebuilders is creating trouble for the housing market of the state. Filling of security interest reflects that many of homebuilders in the state are striving for survival.
According to a Research Analyst at RNCOS, “Home builders, realtors and home buyers are slowly loosing confidence in the Oklahoma housing market because of poor infrastructure of the housing market. Now it’s time for the government to take some serious action like providing permanent jobs to immigrants in the home construction industry to check large scale immigration.”
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