Virginia Beach Housing Market

[Jessenia Munoz]

Hi again! I've been continuing my analyses of the Virginia Beach market and aside from everything else, I'm attempting to pinpont exactly what type of market it is. I've been reading about the different types - linear, cyclical, and hybrid - and I wanted to ask -- am I correct in "diagnosing" the VA Beach market as one that is linear?

I arrived at this conclusion because within my reasearch I found that listing, prices, amount of time or "age" of the properties that are in the market have drops and rises of no more than 5% at most (the majorty are 1%-2%). Being that I'm no real estate wiz (not yet at least), I would say that this seems to be a pretty steady market, thus making it a linear one.

So, for all those investors in the Virginia Beach area... Was my assessment correct?

[Doug Van Liew]

From a local standpoint Virginia Beach needs to be looked at very broadly and to include the Southside Hampton Roads area.  With all of the different industries there are a ton of pockets of hyperlocal markets to make your heads spin!  I'd call it more of a hybrid market mainly for this reason.  As far as negative equity goes, yes it's there but again you need to look at the specific sections of the area to have a fair judgment.  A lot of the negative equity situations I see are due to bad choices in adding loans to their property and capping out the value.