While the long awaited turnaround in the U.S. economy is well underway, there are still areas of concern and employment is not expected to grow as quickly as many people have hoped. Those were some of my takeaways from remarks by Vladimir Bejan of the Albers School and Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.

Bejan said a failure to resolve the issues currently being discussed in Washington D.C. around the extension of the debt ceiling are beginning to have a negative impact on consumer confidence and could push the country back into recession. The Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009.

Humphries said house prices nationally have risen for 13 consecutive months. Throughout the housing decline he said an area he described as a box in King County running from Puget Sound roughly from the county line on the north and Seattle on the south beyond Bellevue has been isolated from the declines seen in Pierce and Snohomish Counties. Current housing inventories are low which means sellers can expect to do well in the short term.

For electronic copies of the presentation, please email Boyd at boyd@vhpr.com.