Meet the housing markets new normal, 7% mortgage rates and all

Table Of Content

• Housing Market Update: The Cost of Buying a Home Hits New Record As Mortgage Rates Jump, Prices Rise 5%
• Editorial: The Supreme Court cannot allow homelessness to be a crime
• countries! San Jose second-grade teacher becomes rare traveler to visit every country in the world
• Supreme Court won't let former Trump aide Peter Navarro out of jail while he appeals sentence
• New home sales still growing from 2022 lows
• Limits on San Francisco’s clearing of homeless encampments upheld by 9th Circuit

It's a difficult situation not just for renters, but also for prospective home buyers. They put down offers on more than twenty homes because they kept losing out to other buyers, before finally closing on one. Natalie French was renting an apartment with a roommate in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when they received a notice that their rent was going up by more than 200 dollars a month. Jeff Tucker, a Zillow economist, said it’s possible home prices have already found a bottom. Inventory is very low, and a modest increase in demand could be enough to send prices back up, he said.

Housing Market Update: The Cost of Buying a Home Hits New Record As Mortgage Rates Jump, Prices Rise 5%

Experts said some of the recent price cuts probably came from overeager sellers who priced their properties way over market value to take advantage of what until recently was a very hot market. Carl Izbicki, a real estate agent at RE/MAX Estate Properties in Los Angeles, said homes that used to get about 15 to 25 offers now get three to five. Now, buyers can leave those contingencies in place and have their offers taken seriously, said real estate agent Derek Oie, founder of Movement Real Estate in the Inland Empire. As a result, fewer homes are going into escrow, inventory is rising and sellers are starting to react. Residents of the Los Angeles area are changing how they eat, shop and do business to cope with some of the nation’s highest gas and housing prices.

Editorial: The Supreme Court cannot allow homelessness to be a crime

"Additional housing supply is helping to satisfy market demand," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, in the report. The most recent National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), which tracks builder sentiment, saw a fourth consecutive monthly rise, surpassing a crucial threshold with an increase from 48 to 51 in March. A reading of 50 or above means more builders see good conditions ahead for new construction.

countries! San Jose second-grade teacher becomes rare traveler to visit every country in the world

Weekly housing inventory data — both active inventory and new listings  — are prone to one-week moves that deviate from a trend, especially if people are going Easter egg hunting. So, the fact that active inventory and new listings data fell last week isn’t a big deal. Although I expect some of the weekly data to rebound next week as a result, growth in active and new listings is still trending slower than I thought would happen in 2024.

Many baby boomers own homes that are too big. Can they be enticed to sell them?

High interest rates and inflated home values have made purchasing a home challenging for first-time homebuyers. As a Los Angeles financial planner, who has grown up in Southern California, I have seen the real estate market boom and bust over the years. I am also fortunate enough to see the long-term trend of real estate prices going up, up, and up over time. Most of the homebuying discussed here could apply to any housing market that may or may not be coming up on a crash. For the last few years, limited housing inventory and low rates have put the housing market on ice.

Industry experts, for now, do not see a plunge coming in the housing market, catapulted to record-high prices in the first two years of the pandemic as many people sought out more space and had new savings to spend. The growing number of price cuts, a trend showing up in data from Southern California and across the nation, is one of the strongest signs yet that the previously red-hot market, fueled by low mortgage rates and all-cash bidding wars, is cooling. A decline in mortgage rates from above 7% into the 6% range brought some buyers back, real estate agents say, as did a belief among buyers that rates wouldn’t fall much more if they continued to hold out. Redfin says that in five of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, including Portland, Oregon, and Houston, prices are decreasing.

Well, I had no plans of selling or need to move, and I still own the home. The consultancy expects rates to average around 6% for the remainder of 2023. County home prices will have dropped percentage-wise by the “high-single digits” compared with December 2022 — a moment when the company’s home price index had already recorded a 5% drop from the peak. Overall, L.A. County home prices have fallen 3% to 14% since the peak in pricing last year, according to a review of various platforms that track prices in different ways. Additionally, with less competition, sellers are more likely to pay for repairs or cover a buyer’s closing costs. In L.A. County during the four weeks ended Feb. 5, the number of signed purchase contracts was 42% below the same period last year, according to data from real estate brokerage Redfin.

New home sales still growing from 2022 lows

“Home sales essentially remain stuck because (the) mortgage rate has been stable and inventory is not really rising,” said Lawrence Yun, the NAR’s chief economist. Mortgage rates have risen the past three weeks, with the average rate on a 30-year mortgage moving this week above 7% to its highest level since late November, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell 4.3% in March from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.19 million, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That’s the first monthly decline in sales since December and follows a nearly 10% monthly sales jump in February. Sellers may increasingly find they need to work with an agent who’s tapped into local trends to avoid having their homes sit on the market for a long time, Freedman said. With supply increasing, buyers stand to benefit from a little more time in the process than in years past, when countless buyers were waiving inspections and bidding well over asking prices just to be in the running.

In 2023, according to Variety’s calculations, Spanish films and series ranked No. 1 on the Netflix global non-English Top 10 charts for 13 weeks – only bettered by South Korea (22). In contrast, after the U.K., South Korea and India, Spain figures as the fourth biggest international market in the world in terms of current series orders by the “global six” streamers, Ampere’s Guy Bisson said at Drama Vision. He declined to specify the price Fox was seeking for a 30-second ad in the event. CBS sought between $6.5 million and $7 million for such inventory in this year’s game. The new record audience and recent demand could spur Fox to test going well over $7.5 million.

Rick Palacios Jr., director of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, said the research firm is debating whether to adjust its forecast downward because of the jump by mortgage rates above 6%. Michael Simonsen, founder of real estate data firm Altos Research, said that though some buyers are now priced out, others probably have paused their searches for other reasons. Monthly mortgage payments for a same-priced home are now hundreds of dollars — sometimes upward of $1,000 — more than what they were at the beginning of the year, when rates were in the 3% range. In April, the median sales price for an existing single-family house in Southern California rose 2% from a month earlier to $785,000, according to the California Assn. of Realtors. That was the third straight month prices climbed from the prior month.

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With experience in both the mortgage industry and as a journalist, she was previously an editor with HousingWire, where she produced daily news and feature stories. When she’s not working on finance-related content, Caroline enjoys baseball, traveling and going to concerts. If you’re in a financial position to buy a home you plan to live in for the long term, it won’t matter when you buy it because you will live in it through economic highs and lows. However, if you are looking to buy real estate as a short-term investment, it will come with more risk if you buy at the height before a recession.

She received less than half of what she expected from selling her home. While that seemed like a bad decision, she ended up coming out ahead, thanks to her decision to purchase her retirement home on Balboa Island in Newport Beach. Beyond money, her house on Balboa Island was a better fit for her lifestyle and much more fun for our large extended family to visit regularly.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The spring homebuying season is off to a sluggish start as home shoppers contend with elevated mortgage rates and rising prices. With over two years of experience writing in the housing market space, Robin Rothstein demystifies mortgage and loan concepts, helping first-time homebuyers and homeowners make informed decisions as they navigate the home loan marketplace. Her work has been published or syndicated on Forbes Advisor, SoFi, MSN and Nasdaq, among other media outlets. During the week ended Feb. 10, U.S. mortgage applications — precursors to home sales — dropped compared from the prior week as rates rose, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Assn. For would-be buyers putting down 20%, the monthly mortgage payment on a $800,000 house would be about $100 more expensive with an interest rate of 6.32% than with 6.09%. But the payment at 6.32% is $322 less than at 7.08%, which is where rates topped out in the fall, according to Freddie Mac.

“Potential buyers remain quite sensitive,” Joel Kan, an economist with the Mortgage Bankers Assn., said in a news release announcing the data. Such continued affordability challenges are a major reason some experts predict Southern California home prices have further to fall. But with nearby houses typically listed above $1.5 million, the dream is out of reach. By then, prices ideally will have fallen enough so they can stretch their budget to buy. Tressa Pope, founder of TPG Mortgage Lending in Burbank, said people using down payment assistance programs have also had luck. When competition was fierce, sellers often refused to consider those buyers, because they feared paperwork would bog down the deals.

It also meant people who had owned their homes for at least a few years, who might have locked in a mortgage in the 3% to 4% range, didn't want to sell. The lack of homes on the market contributed to big increases in home prices. Many economists still expect that mortgage rates will ease modestly this year, which could give homebuyers who can’t afford to pay all cash for a home more purchasing power. The available inventory at the end of last month amounted to a 3.2-month supply, going by the current sales pace. That’s up from a 2.9-month supply in February and a 2.7-month supply in March last year. In a more balanced market between buyers and sellers, there is a 4- to 5-month supply.