I recently had the pleasure of attending a HAR event in which Dr. Ted C. Jones delivered a presentation on the Outlook of Real Estate and the Economy for 2016. Dr. Jones is the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at Stewart Title Guaranty Company. He previously served as chief economist at Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center. It’s always good to hear from a bright mind and simply take in all the knowledge and expertise they have to give. I’m excited to pass along to you a little of what I learned in this series of posts on his talk.

One thing I found rather interesting about Dr. Jones’ talk was how he determines the health of the economy. Dr. Jones’ inventive approach actually involves looking at the number of leisure and hospitality jobs to ascertain how the economy is doing. For many of us, no matter if we were looking at the United States as a whole, or thinking more locally, this would be far from the first path we would go down when trying to decipher the state of the economy.

Dr. Jones’ method makes sense though. His reasoning is that people generally don’t spend a lot of money on vacations, club memberships, fine dining, and other things that may be seen as luxuries unless they feel good about the economy. Because of this, he rationalizes that the job numbers for leisure and hospitality industries are a good indicator of the economy’s health. If the economy is doing well and people are feeling good about it, they’ll spend more on those types of luxuries, thus making more jobs available for people working in hotels, clubs, restaurants and other like businesses. In maintaining with his theory, Dr. Jones’ statistics showed that leisure and hospitality jobs declined during the United States’ recent recessions.

With this background, Dr. Jones presented us with the leisure and hospitality job numbers for 2015. In the United States as a whole, the number of leisure and hospitality jobs increased 2.92 percent. In Texas, that number was even bigger, as it climbed 4.54 percent. Houston actually had an increase more impressive than both of those as the 12 month moving average showed a 6.33 percent increase over 12 months earlier. Based on Dr. Jones’ way of determining the state of the economy, these numbers suggest that 2015 ended up being a fairly good year!

Looking to buy or sell a home, or just have questions about the market? Always feel free to contact me at 713.829.3052 or cynthia@cynthiamullins.com.

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