QE3, the Fed’s third round of quantitative easing, won’t do much to lift the real estate market, according to Thomas Flexner, the global head of real estate at Citigroup, who appeared today on CNBC (see above).
Though he believes that the market has hit bottom, the sole benefit of that bottoming out, he said, is that interest rates are to remain at record lows.
But those rates don’t necessarily translate into lending. Credit criteria for new mortgages is now more difficult than it previously was, Flexner said. Tight credit combined with diminished savings are keeping the housing market from making a major comeback, according to analysts. [CNBC]