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Tag: housing market

  • The U.S. housing market to see second biggest correction of the post-WWII era—when to expect the home price bottom

    The U.S. housing market to see second biggest correction of the post-WWII era—when to expect the home price bottom

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    Homebuilders and economists alike saw the 2000s housing bubble brewing—they just didn’t think it would burst. Their reasoning being, that at the time, home prices hadn’t really fallen since the Great Depression era.

    “I think that the religion people had from 1946 to 2008, that housing prices always go up, is dead. My parents believed that it was literally inconceivable for [home] prices to go down,” Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman tells Fortune.

    That “religion” of course came crashing down after the bursting housing bubble caused U.S. home prices to fall a staggering 27% from 2006 to 2012. Knowing that home prices can indeed fall, Kelman says, is why builders and flippers started cutting prices faster this time around. Once the market shifted, they wanted to get out first.

    “Folks [are] responding [in 2022] to that with almost PTSD, and they pull back much more quickly,” Kelman says.

    As of August, the lagged Case-Shiller Index showed that U.S. home prices had fallen 1.3% from their June 2022 peak. That marks the first decline since 2012. It’s also likely well below the actual drop. Just look at the 7.6% decline in third quarter U.S. home equity, as reported on Friday by Black Knight. That’s the biggest home equity drop ($1.3 trillion) ever recorded, and the biggest percentage drop since 2009.

    Just how far will home prices fall? It depends on who you ask.

    Researchers at Goldman Sachs expect U.S. home prices to decline between 5% to 10% from peak-to-trough—with their official forecast model predicting a 7.6% drop. If it comes to fruition, it’d surpass the 2.2% decline between May 1990 and April 1991. That would make this ongoing correction the second biggest home price decline of the post-World War II era.

    “Economists at Goldman Sachs Research say there are risks that housing markets could decline more than their model suggests…based on signals from home price momentum and housing affordability,” writes Goldman Sachs on its website.

    That said, it could take a while for home prices to reach the bottom. In fact, the Goldman Sachs model estimates U.S. home prices won’t get to that point until March 2024.

    Researchers at Moody’s Analytics are a bit more bearish.

    It forecasts a 10% peak-to-trough U.S. home price decline, with prices bottoming out in late 2025. However, if a recession hits, Moody’s Analytics would expect a bigger 15% to 20% peak-to-trough decline.

    Of course, when groups say “U.S. house prices,” they’re talking about a national aggregate. Regionally, researchers acknowledge that shifts in home prices vary significantly by market. In bubbly markets like Boise and Nashville, Moody’s forecasts a decline of around 20%. Meanwhile in Chicago, a relatively tame market during the boom, it expects a home price decline of less than 3.6%. (You can find their forecast for 322 markets here).

    Why are home prices already starting to roll over? It boils down to what Fortune calls pressurized affordability. Spiked mortgage rates coupled with a historic 43% jump in U.S. home prices during the Pandemic Housing Boom has simply put monthly payments beyond what many would-be borrowers can afford.

    When it’s all said and done, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi thinks this ongoing housing correction will push national housing fundamentals back in line with historic norms.

    “Before prices began to decline, we were overvalued [nationally] by around 25%. Now, this means prices will normalize. Affordability will be restored. The [housing] market won’t be overvalued after this process is over,” Zandi says.

    Want to stay updated on the housing correction? Follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

    Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.

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    Lance Lambert

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  • LI housing market slows as sales and prices retreat | Long Island Business News

    LI housing market slows as sales and prices retreat | Long Island Business News

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    The Long Island housing market continued to cool off last month, as higher mortgage rates chilled sales and prices. 

    There were 2,110 Long Island homes contracted for sale in October, down 8 percent from the 2,292 pending sales in the previous month and a drop of 29.1 percent from the 2,976 homes that were contracted for sale in Oct. 2021, according to preliminary numbers from OneKey MLS. 

    Home sales on Long Island have seen year-over-year declines since the pandemic buying frenzy began to calm in the second half of 2021. There were 24,785 homes contracted for sale in Nassau and Suffolk counties in the first 10 months of this year, a 19.6 percent drop from the 30,839 pending sales in the first 10 months of 2021. 

    The gross closing volume of Long Island home sales from January through October this year was $18.538 billion, a decrease of more than $1.17 billion from the gross closing volume of $19.71 billion recorded in the first 10 months of 2021. 

    Home prices have been falling. The median price of closed home sales in Nassau last month was $675,000, a drop of $20,000 from the $695,000 median price in September and the lowest median price since the $668,000 median recorded in April. 

    In Suffolk, the median price of closed home sales last month was $550,000, the same as September’s median and the lowest median price since April’s median of $540,000. 

    Still, Long Island home prices are higher than they were a year ago. Nassau’s median price of closed home sales last month is 3.8 percent higher than the $650,000 median recorded in Oct. 2021. Suffolk’s median price of closed home sales last month is 6.2 percent higher than the $517,250 median recorded in Oct. 2021. 

    While mortgage rates are hovering around 7 percent and more than double what they were a year ago, they haven’t impacted prices as much as expected because inventory remains historically low. There were 6,648 homes listed for sale with OneKey MLS—3,061 in Nassau and 3,587 in Suffolk—as of Monday, which is down 1.5 percent from the 6,748 homes that were listed for sale at the end of September. 

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    David Winzelberg

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  • The Fed’s housing market ‘reset’ isn’t letting up anytime soon—5 things to know heading into 2023

    The Fed’s housing market ‘reset’ isn’t letting up anytime soon—5 things to know heading into 2023

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    “We have a ways to go, we have ground to cover with interest rates before we get to that level of interest rates that is sufficiently restrictive…we will stay the course until the job is done,” Powell told reporters after unveiling the Fed’s fourth consecutive three-quarter point hike in the Federal Funds rate.

    That’s not exactly what builders and mortgage brokers were hoping to hear.

    On one hand, this latest hike shouldn’t send mortgage rates—which financial markets price ahead of anticipated shifts in financial conditions—spiking. On the other hand, this additional rate hike also means financial markets aren’t about to send mortgage rates plunging.

    During the presser, Powell acknowledged that continued quantitative tightening means more pain still awaits the U.S. housing market.

    “Housing is significantly affected by these higher rates,” Powell told reporters. “The housing market needs to get back into a balance between supply and demand. We’re well aware of what’s going on there.”

    What exactly does that mean?

    To get a better idea of where the housing market downturn might head in 2023, let’s take a deeper dive into recent Fed commentary. Here’s the five big takeaways.

    1. The Fed’s housing market “reset” has pushed us into a “difficult [housing] correction”

    In June, Powell told reporters that the U.S. housing market needed to be “reset.”

    “We saw [home] prices moving up very, very strongly for the last couple of years. So that changes now…I’d say if you are a homebuyer, somebody or a young person looking to buy a home, you need a bit of a reset. We need to get back to a place where supply and demand are back together and where inflation is down low again, and mortgage rates are low again,” Powell told reporters this summer.

    At the time, Powell admitted he wasn’t sure how the “reset” would impact home prices. However, fast-forward to the September meeting, and Powell acknowledged that the Fed’s policy moves had pushed the U.S. housing market into a “difficult correction.”

    According to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, a housing correction is a period in which the U.S. housing market—which got priced to 3% mortgage rates—works toward equilibrium in the face of spiked rates. Unlike the stock market, housing corrections are felt most acutely through a sharp drop in home sales. That said, Zandi says this correction will also put downward pressure on home prices.

    2. U.S. home prices are falling for the first time since 2012—the Fed says it could turn into a “material” drop

    In June, Powell said he was “not sure” if spiked mortgage rates would translate into lower home prices. But on Wednesday, Powell said “in some parts of the country you’re [now] seeing house prices declining.”

    The data backs him up. The latest reading of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index shows that U.S. home prices fell 1.3% between June and August. That’s the first decline nationally since 2012.

    “While this [housing] market correction could be fairly mild, I cannot dismiss the possibility of a much larger drop in demand and house prices before the market normalizes,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller told an audience at the University of Kentucky in October.

    Waller went on to say this could turn into a “material” home price decline.

    Just how big is a “material” correction? Waller didn’t elaborate.

    3. The pandemic’s demand boom is over

    Even as policymakers scrambled to save an economy with a double-digit jobless rate in the spring of 2020, the U.S. housing market was already moving into boom mode.

    That boom was set-off by a spike in housing demand. Wealthy urbanities wanted second homes to help them escape locked down cities. Remote workers realized they could finally move deeper in the burbs or take off for a more affordable market. Meanwhile, investors realized that a combination of home price appreciation and historically low mortgage rates meant they could make a killing in the housing market.

    “We show that the COVID-19 housing boom in the U.S. was driven by an increase in demand…Since new construction typically accounts for about 15% of supply, our estimates imply that new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand,” wrote Fed researchers this summer.

    That’s all over now. In the face of soaring mortgage rates, that demand boom deflated. Second home purchases tanked. Flippers called timeout. And some would-be buyers got called back into the office.

    This historic demand pullback could help the housing market achieve Powell’s goal of “balance.” By temporarily sidelining buyers, the Fed can give inventory breathing room to adjust upwards.

    4. The U.S. mortgage backed securities market remains “broken”

    Anytime the Fed moves into inflation-fighting mode, mortgage rates rise.

    That said, the magnitude of the mortgage rate gains— rates jumped from 3.09% to 7.3% over the past year—has caught the industry off guard. Historically, mortgage rates trade around 1.75 percentage points above the 10-year Treasury yield (which is currently at 4%). That spread is around 3 percentage points right now. The reason? As the Fed backed off buying mortgage-backed securities, investors—who assume new borrowers will refinance in the future and thus reduce returns—weren’t eager to pick up the MBS securities.

    This divergence between Treasury yields and mortgage rates has some analysts claiming the “MBS market is broken.”

    While the Fed hasn’t publicly commented on the spread, Powell did say in June he expects mortgage rates to eventually fall. What could cause that? If the Fed successfully tames inflation, it could pull back on hikes. There’s also the chance that higher rates could push us into a recession, which would then prompt the Fed to lower rates.

    5. A “material” drop in home prices shouldn’t set off a 2008-like financial crisis

    Unlike the housing correction that started in 2006, Powell doesn’t expect the 2022 correction to trigger a financial collapse.

    “From a financial stability standpoint, we didn’t see in this cycle the kinds of poor underwriting credit that we saw before the Great Financial Crisis. Housing credit was much more carefully managed by the lenders. It’s a very different situation [in 2022], it doesn’t present potential, [well] it doesn’t appear to present financial stability issues. But we do understand that [housing] is where a very big effect of our policies is,” Powell said on Wednesday.

    Fed Governor Waller had a similar message back in October.

    “Despite the risk of a material correction in house prices, several factors help reduce my concern that such a correction would trigger a wave of mortgage defaults and potentially destabilize the financial system,” Waller told an audience at the University of Kentucky. “One is that because of relatively tight mortgage underwriting in the 2010s, the credit scores of mortgage borrowers today are generally higher than they were prior to that last housing correction. Also, the experience of the last correction taught us that most borrowers only default when they experience a negative shock to their incomes in addition to being underwater on their mortgage.”

    Want to stay updated on the housing correction? Follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

    Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.

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    Lance Lambert

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  • What Is a Housing Bubble? And Which Cities Are at the Highest Risk?

    What Is a Housing Bubble? And Which Cities Are at the Highest Risk?

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    The housing market is shifting, but not everywhere. As across the globe continue to adjust after the pandemic, certain metropolitan areas are more at risk of a than others, according to a new report by UBS.


    Alexander Spatari | Getty Images

    A housing bubble refers to an increased rise in home prices at a rapid pace, driven by increased demand and limited supply. When the bubble inevitably “bursts,” usually driven by increased interest rates, demand decreases.

    The UBS Global Bubble Index examined 25 cities across the globe, tracking current values and risk-based classifications (depressed, undervalued, fair valued, overvalued, and bubble risk) to determine which areas are most at risk of a housing bubble.

    Across the globe, was the city with the highest risk of a housing bubble — prices are 17% higher than they were a year ago, marking the biggest increase in five years.

    In the U.S., Miami was the city with the highest risk of a housing bubble and reported the highest house prices and rental growth of all the cities in the study.

    For the rest of the country, the Magic City was followed by , , Boston, and .

    Overall, the cities analyzed saw nominal price growth of 10% from mid-2021 to mid-2022, marking the highest increase since 2007. With the exception of Tokyo, every city analyzed demonstrated rent prices higher than they were before the pandemic.

    Additionally, mortgage rates have nearly doubled across all of the cities, and with increased prices, affordable city housing is far more scarce than before the pandemic, the report found.

    While New York saw the lowest price growth since mid-2021. Price growth was especially low in Manhattan and the luxury segment. Still, the Big Apple remains one of the least affordable cities in the country due to increased demand and limited supply following the mass exodus during the pandemic.

    Related: NYC Rent On a Minimum Wage Salary? That’ll Be Over 100 Hours a Week

    Credit: UBS

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    Madeline Garfinkle

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  • 7 Secrets Home Buyers Must Know

    7 Secrets Home Buyers Must Know

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    The millennium brought about so many first-time home buyers across the globe deciding to go big. Many young generations no longer depend on the old folks for shelter. They have now moved into making huge investments at once. Unlike the older generations’ approach of starting small and growing gradually, the modern first-time home buyer has more risk appetite and is making big decisions.

    Nonetheless, it is crucial to analyze the market trend, highlight the home buyers’ tastes and preferences, have a contingency budget, review the property location, conduct due diligence on the realtors and have an informed review.

    Related: 4 Lessons I’ve Learned in 10 Years of Building a Luxury Real Estate Brokerage

    1. Analyze the market trend

    It’s not all that glitters is gold. We all like taking photos that highlight more of our solid features and less of our weaknesses. The photogenic approach taken on a property often does not highlight everything. It’s paramount for the buyer to visit the property and do their reality check. Sometimes real estate agents modify photos to show bigger spaces, great interior designs, and features, which may not be the case in real-life situations. Before making that significant decision, it’s essential to visit the site before reaffirming your decision.

    Besides, the pricing often is used to entice the buyer into purchasing the property. Although it’s believed that the higher the price, the more sophisticated the property is. Nonetheless, that may not be the case. Therefore it is essential to compare the market trend, pricing and photos and do a reality check before moving.

    Related: How NFTs Could Change Real Estate

    2. Highlight your taste and preference

    Purchasing your luxurious home requires a considerable . The chunk of money to be invested should correspond to satisfying your desires on what and how you want your home to look. It is important to emphasize to your realtor what features are most important.

    3. Create a contingency budget

    As much as your most preferred luxurious home may look, it may not have all the features you may require. As a result, it is crucial to set aside some contingency funds to cater to what is missing. Contingency funds are also significant to cater to additional costs, which the realtor often does not highlight at the purchasing time.

    4. Review the property location

    Purchasing a house is a big decision and should therefore require enough due diligence before purchase. As a result, it’s essential to get to know your neighborhood, how secure it is and if it’s a beach house, the distance from the beach, and the strategic location to all the essential facilities such as the market, school, hospital and recreation places. Infrastructure, accessibility and drainage are also some of the vital features to take into consideration.

    5. Know your realtor’s experience

    Purchasing your luxury home through a highly experienced realtor will guarantee efficiency in your home ownership journey. The National Association of Realtors offers certification to ensure home buyers deal with highly experienced real estate agents. The realtor should be attentive to fine details about the exact specification of the features that the home ought to have.

    An experienced realtor would be mindful of the standard prices for the apartment, which would help them negotiate for you a fair price. You want to purchase a home that meets the ‘s housing construction standards. Buying an apartment that does not meet the housing construction code puts you at risk of demolition. An inexperienced realtor would not be able to draft binding contracts with the building’s seller risking you losing your house.

    Related: How to Up-Level Yourself as a Realtor

    6. Do a thorough investigation of the home

    Require analysis to establish that the home does not have faults that could further cost you. Electricity connection checks are paramount because having flaws could cause a fire outbreak that could destroy your apartment, leading to financial loss. You also need an engineer’s recommendation to understand whether the building’s foundation was rightly constructed. Cracks in the foundation or the walls could cause the building to collapse, leading to losses. Before purchasing your luxury dream home, it would be necessary to ascertain whether the construction adhered to due diligence.

    You should also assess the security of the area where you intend to purchase your dream home. The government’s insecurity data would help ascertain whether the place where your luxury home is located is safe. The government’s crime rate statistics would help you identify areas prone to burglaries and assault. Purchasing a home in an area with a high prevalence of crimes would cause you to live in constant fear, denying you peace of mind.

    7. Your realtor’s review matters

    Many realtors are driven by their gain more than by giving their clients what they want. Therefore, the home buyer must do a background check on their realtor and their reviews.

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    Chris D. Bentley

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  • Updated: Odds of falling home prices in your local housing market, as told by one interactive map

    Updated: Odds of falling home prices in your local housing market, as told by one interactive map

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    Unlike the stock market—which corrects through price shifts—housing corrections are historically felt the most acutely through declines in housing activity. That, of course, is why spiked mortgage rates are already translating into sharp declines in both existing and new home sales.

    That said, it’s increasingly clear that this housing correction won’t be felt through just a decline in housing activity. The housing correction is also putting downward pressure on home prices, with many markets having already slipped into a home price correction.

    To better understand where home prices might be headed, Fortune reached out to CoreLogic to see if the firm would provide us with its updated October assessment of the nation’s largest regional housing markets. To determine the likelihood of regional home prices dropping, CoreLogic assessed factors like income growth projections, unemployment forecasts, consumer confidence, debt-to-income ratios, affordability, mortgage rates, and inventory levels. Then CoreLogic put regional housing markets into one of five categories, grouped by the likelihood that home prices in that particular market will fall between August 2022 and August 2023. Here are the groupings the real estate research firm used for the October analysis:

    • Very high: Over 70% chance of a price dip
    • High: 50%–70% chance
    • Medium: 40%–50% chance
    • Low: 20%–40% chance
    • Very Low: 0%–20% chance

    Between August 2022 and August 2023, CoreLogic predicts national home prices are poised to rise another 3.2%. That said, CoreLogic’s forecast model estimates a huge swath of the country is at risk of falling home prices.

    Of the 392 regional housing markets that CoreLogic measured, zero markets currently have “very low” odds of falling home prices over the coming year. Another 18 housing markets are in the “low” group and 39 markets are in the “medium” group. Meanwhile, CoreLogic put 97 markets in the “high” camp and 238 markets in the “very high” odds camp.

    This October assessment finds 335 markets have a greater than 50% chance of notching a negative year-over-year reading (i.e. markets in either the “high” or “very high” risk groups) over the next 12 months. In August, only 125 markets had a greater than 50% chance of falling home prices. In July, there were 98 markets at risk. In June, 45 markets were at risk. In May, just 26 markets fell into those “high” or “very high” risk camps.

    The trajectory is clear: Falling home prices are getting more and more likely.

    There’s two main reasons CoreLogic’s outlook continues to go lower. 1. Housing data, which feeds into the forecast model, continues to weaken in the face of deteriorating housing affordability. 2. Home prices are already falling in many markets.

    “With some markets already posting month-to-month declines since this year’s peak in prices, probability of price decline on a year-over-year basis intensified as well in August,” Selma Hepp, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic, tells Fortune.

    Where are home prices falling the fastest? The biggest declines are occurring in West Coast, Southwest, and Mountain West markets.

    “Markets already posting monthly declines are generally concentrated in the West and Mountain West, particularly in Washington, Idaho, California, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, Montana, Nevada and Arizona, and have seen relatively larger run-up in prices since the onset of pandemic,” Hepp says.

    The sharpest home price corrections can be found in one of two groups. The first group are high-cost tech hubs like Seattle and San Jose. Not only are those high-end housing markets more rate sensitive, but so are their tech sectors. The second groups are frothy housing markets like Austin, Boise, and Phoenix. Those frothy markets—which saw home values go far beyond what local incomes can support during the Pandemic Housing Boom reach levels that local incomes are struggling to support.

    Hungry for more housing data? Follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

    Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.

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    Lance Lambert

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  • The home price correction intensifies—what to expect from the U.S. housing market in 2023

    The home price correction intensifies—what to expect from the U.S. housing market in 2023

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    That, of course, is what we’re seeing now. Despite favorable demographics and tight inventory levels, pressured affordability—spiked mortgage rates coupled with frothy home prices—is beginning to push home prices lower. In fact, this week we learned that U.S. home prices as measured by the Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index posted its first month-over-month decline since 2012.

    Across the country, the U.S. housing market—which got priced to 3% mortgage rates during the Pandemic Housing Boom—is working toward equilibrium in the face of 6% mortgage rates. But we’re still in the early innings. And the ongoing home price correction still hasn’t hit every market: Between May and August, home values in San Jose fell 10.6% while home values grew 2% in Orlando.

    To better understand where the U.S. housing downturn heads next—and if the home price correction will soon hit more markets—Fortune reached out to Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf. When she’s not traveling around the country speaking to homebuilders, she’s advising the White House on housing matters.

    Below is Fortune‘s Q&A with Ali Wolf.

    Fortune: As the data rolls in, it’s pretty clear that home prices are falling in many markets across the country. In some places it’s fairly sharp. Do you expect home price declines to continue into 2023?

    Wolf: We haven’t seen home prices drop universally across the country, but there are some markets where home prices have started to come down and we expect to see that in more metros across the country in the next handful of months. Corrections in home prices can be expected in 2023 as long as interest rates remain elevated and consumer demand remains slow.

    What types of markets are the most vulnerable? 

    The markets that are the most vulnerable include: 1) Those where home prices rose sharply because of hybrid work, like Boise, Las Vegas, and Denver. 2) Markets that don’t have a local employment base to support the higher home prices (put another way, markets where home prices and incomes are out of whack), like Nashville and parts of Florida. 3) Markets where housing inventory has risen rapidly, like Phoenix and Austin.

    Why are markets like Austin, Boise, and Phoenix shifting so fast

    The housing booms seen in markets like Austin, Boise, and Phoenix were among the earliest in the nation and the sharpest. The record-low mortgage interest rates combined with lifestyle changes brought on by the pandemic, including work from home and increased relocations, drove a dramatic uptick in housing demand and supply could not keep pace.

    Those relocating from places like California and Washington were able to tap home equity from a sale in the higher cost market and put those funds towards buying a new home in these relatively more affordable markets. Relocation buyers found these markets very affordable compared to where they were moving from at the detriment of local buyers.

    There was a belief in these markets that the supply and demand imbalance was so severe and so long standing that the markets could never get overheated. Buyers, frantic to secure a home, were willing to pay almost any price to secure a home. Investors and flippers considered these markets ripe for opportunities. This mentality contributed to the massive run-up in home prices.

    As interest rates rose in early 2022, however, reality started to kick in. Home price appreciation was slowing and not every home that was listed was selling for above the list price within a day of coming online. The demand for housing slowed just as some of the new homes under construction started coming online and existing home inventory rapidly increased as sellers tried to time what they believed to be the top of the market. 

    How do you expect mortgage rates near 7% to impact the housing market? We were already correcting with 5% mortgage rates. Should we expect things to intensify with 6.5%-7% rates?

    Housing affordability is driven by many factors, but the two key inputs are home prices and mortgage rates. We just lived through a unique period in American history where rising home prices were offset by record-low interest rates. The cheap financing helped keep the monthly mortgage payment in check.

    Interest rates have risen dramatically since the start of the year, though, putting a strain on housing affordability. Buyers were already starting to get priced out of the market when interest rates moved from 3% to 4% and every 100-basis point increase has continued to price millions of Americans out of homeownership.

    If mortgage rates remain elevated for an extended period, we expect that housing demand will remain soft, new home construction will be restricted, and home prices will need to adjust downward across the country.

    Want to stay updated on the housing correction? Follow me on Twitter at @NewsLambert.

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    Lance Lambert

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