According to a survey by RCLCO, sentiments about the real estate conditions in the United States remain at a relatively high level, but slightly below where they were six months ago. Just over one-half (51 percent) of RCLCO’s midyear 2018 Sentiment Survey respondents say U.S. real estate market conditions are moderately or significantly better today than they were 12 months ago, five percentage points lower than in the year-end 2017 survey.
Other highlights of the survey:
- Modest increases in interest rates are expected to have minimal to moderate impact on real estate markets, skewing slightly to worse overall market conditions.
- Just over two-thirds of survey respondents now expect the next real estate downturn to be in 2020 or later, including one-fourth of respondents who expect the next downturn to be in 2021 or later, which puts the next cyclical peak significantly later than in previous surveys.
- While most product types exhibited little cycle movement since six months ago, remaining in the stable phases of the real estate cycle, several product types moved definitively into the late stable phase of the real estate cycle.
- RCLCO’s outlook for generally positive, though moderating, operating and investment performance through the remainder of 2018 is consistent with the majority of survey respondents.
