Lynch: Real estate economic essential

ALBANY, Ga. — Jeremy Lynch parsed his words carefully, cloaking bleak economic data in a barrage of numbers.

Speaking before the Albany Rotary Club Thursday at Doublegate Country Club, the real estate attorney with Black, Custer and Lynch threw out his numbers and let the gathered members draw their own conclusions.

But Lynch has some ideas of his own.

“Our economy has a long, long way to go toward recovery,” Lynch said later. “The problem is no one knows if we’ve even hit the bottom yet. But if we haven’t, we are real close.

“The real estate market is the backbone of our economy, and the entire market is being dragged down by home foreclosures. Right now the number of foreclosures is running about five times higher than normal.

Until we get the foreclosure numbers back to 1 or 2 percent, we will not see significant recovery.”

Lynch said the metro real estate market is in better shape than most of the country, but work coming across his desk has slowed because banks are reluctant to lend money, consumers are scared to take on additional debt and those who want to buy homes need pristine credit.

“I don’t think the state of the local real estate market is that bad, but it is suffering because of the overall condition of the U.S. economy,” Lynch said. “Most homes around here have seen an average of a 10 percent drop in value, which isn’t that bad when compared to the rest of the nation.

“The odd part is that is you removed Florida and Nevada from the national numbers, the overall picture would brighten dramatically.”

No one knows what the future holds, and Lynch said that is spooking and changing the market.

“The real estate world is changing rapidly as we speak,” Lynch said. “Lenders and title companies are going out of business or merging every day. Lumber prices were at an all-time high in February, but there has been a 21 percent drop in futures prices since.

“There is a lot of uncertainty out there, and people are scared.”