Barbara Corcoran on the Emotional Economics of the Housing Market

So much of business is clinical, scientific even—balance sheets either add up or they don’t. But in the housing market, emotions are as important as 1s and 0s.

And today, many of us are walking an emotional tightrope made all the tighter by the fact that we’re staring down the barrel of a recession. So how do we understand what comes next for the residential real estate industry—a space characterized by physical, in-person dealings—when we’re mostly homebound and mostly short on disposable income?

This week on Business Casual, we get the answer from Barbara Corcoran—star of ABC’s Shark Tank, real estate icon, and (apparently) budding philosopher.

In Part I of our interview with Barbara, she walks us through the intricacies of the housing market today, from buyer to seller to broker. Curious about prices? Wondering what virtual home tours are like? Barbara’s got you.

And she’s serving up the insight in several flavors:

The optimist’s case: The spring buying spree residential real estate typically enjoys isn’t canceled, but rather postponed. Once we get better COVID-19 testing mechanisms in place, we’ll come out of hibernation to what Barbara expects to be a “vibrant” midsummer market.

And the pessimist’s case: For the housing market, it doesn’t matter how many trillions of dollars the U.S. government passes in stimulus and relief bills. Can you think of anyone who would spend their unemployment benefits, no matter how expanded, on a new home?

Listen now. We’ll cover the commercial market in depth (yes, we’ll talk about WeWork) with Barbara in Part II of the interview, out next from Business Casual. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it.