Vintage Article: Substantial Support Seen for Real Estate

Cited below is a real estate article from 1939. We found it interesting:

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Sunday Morning, February 5, 1939. The Palm Beach Post-Times.Substantial Support Seen for Real EstateTwo potent circumstances which should be of substantial support to the current real estate market are point out by David Nelswanger, Topeka Kans., vice president , National Association of Real Estate Boards, for the South Central Region:“First, we know that real estate generally is in strong hands – the large holders are insisting on and obtaining fair prices in case of sale, and reasonable rental returns. Much repair and reconditioning is being carried on, repossessed properties are being put back into the market, in many cases, substantially improved. Real estate foreclosures have dropped 22 per cent in 1938 as compared with 1937, are now standing at approximately the 1927 level. Mortgage loan delinquencies are reported to be negligible.

Not a few holders of repossessed properties are finding today that the real estate the thus acquired is paying a better net return than are other forms of investment voluntarily purchased with the greatest discrimination.“Secondly, there is a well substantiated conviction that our current supply of residential units will be totally inadequate upon the positive return of better business conditions, the the light of the small percentage of vacancies that now exist the country over.

It is obvious there is an exceedingly narrow margin between an adequate supply and a serious shortage. Those who remember the post-war period will testify to the fact that the transition from surplus to shortage can take place so quietly, so quickly and so unexpectedly that neither the realtor nor the general public is fully conscious of what’s going on.Large Importance“Of large importance is any current picture of real estate is a consideration of governmental activites in the field.“

The granting of insurance of mortgages on existing dwellings (those built previously to Jan. 1, 1937) will terminate on July 1 of this year unless an extension is granted by Congress. Failure to continue the benefits of the act as to existing dwellings would place this large classification of property at a serious disadvantage in the real estate market and reap unfavourably on both new and existing house sales.”The purchase or building of a new house must frequently be conditioned on sale by the family of its existing owned home, it is pointed out.