Source: Realtor.com —
News of a dangerous, potentially more transmissible new COVID-19 variant has shaken the financial markets to the core, resulting in international travel bans and renewed fears for the pandemic-weary population around the world.
But will omicron, discovered in the U.S. last week, infect the housing market?
The fear is that vaccines and antibodies acquired after infections may not be as effective against the variant. Moderna’s chief executive told the Financial Times he didn’t think his company’s vaccine would be as powerful against it as it was against the delta variant. The same day Regeneron said its antibody treatment may have to be updated to better fight the virus.
If those worries are confirmed, real estate experts believe omicron could worsen the already thin supply of homes for sale, affect mortgage interest rates, and ultimately result in higher rents in some parts of the country and lower rents in others. But it will be weeks before scientists understand how the vaccines, antibodies, and treatments stand up to omicron.
“Right now, we are looking at pretty severe reactions to the omicron news in the stock market,” says Tomas Jandik, a finance professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. “The residential market may be more immune to COVID because of what we have already seen in the past waves of the virus.
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