How Unemployment - And Access to Credit - Are Impacting Real Estate Market: Northpointe’s Levesque

How Unemployment - And Access to Credit - Are Impacting Real Estate Market: Northpointe’s Levesque

Northpointe Bank’s Zach Levesque talked about the current real estate conditions in Rhode Island during the coronavirus pandemic on GoLocal LIVE — including the roles that unemployment and access to credit play. 

“I think the biggest thing we have to pay attention to is the unemployment piece — when the unemployment rates were forecasted to be at our about 15 percent 45 days ago, some people were surprised some had it already priced in the market,” said Levesque. 

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“But what that does to lenders is puts them in a more uncertain time, and there’s really no way to forecast because if this pandemic continually got worse and it looked like we weren’t going to be restarting the economy like it appears we are now in June — there were some crazy unemployment projections as early as a month ago that it would be a lot higher — so this uncertainty makes everybody that’s lending money pause," he said. 

“That’s why the Fed stepped in and increased liquidity so that they could make sure that the real estate market — whether its purchase loans or refinance loans — was still functioning,” he added.  “The market is still functioning and that’s because there’s still access to credit.  The real question is once the market does get back and we rereopen across the country, how quickly does that unemployment rate go down.”

And according to Levesque, real estate is still a seller’s market in Rhode Island. 

“It’s like the line at Whole Foods — there’s people waiting to get in, inventory is low, and if you are buying a house, you’re going to probably be in a multiple offer situation,” he said. 

Levesque joins GoLocal LIVE weekly as part of a content partnership.