With the Coronavirus pandemic having America firmly in its grasp, a recent article on Realtor.com says the economy appears to be headed for a recession, if it’s not already in one. To that end, they crunched the numbers to identify those U.S. counties that could be most at risk in our worsening financial crisis. To come up with their list, they looked at counties with the highest percentage of workers in industries most likely to be affected by the crisis. Citing Census data from the 2017 County Business Patterns, they looked at workers in: tourism, hospitality, retail, personal fitness, restaurant, performing arts, car dealers, casinos, and cruise lines. It’s worth noting that the manufacturing industry was not included and they only counted counties with at least 100k workers and limited to one county per state.
“Tourism and vacation-home hot spots could be affected more than others, at least initially. These places that depend on visitors to frequent local hotels, restaurants, and attractions to keep their local economies afloat are starting to see big job losses. And when local economies suffer and people aren’t working, housing markets hurt.”
“But real estate professionals are optimistic that these near-term vulnerable markets, like the rest of the nation, will likely bounce back once the virus is contained.”
“Most housing markets in the country will take a significant short-term hit due to COVID-19,” says Wolf. “[But] ultimately the housing market is going to come back.”
Click here to read the full story at Realtor.com.
