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

Table Of Content

• ‘We expect Powell to make a hawkish pivot’—Fed meeting to headline busy week for global markets
• Opinion: The Supreme Court just showed us that Trump is not incompetent. He’s a master of corruption
• Finally, some healthy housing inventory growth
• Taylor Swift’s ‘Tortured Poets’ Becomes First Album to Get One Billion Streams on Spotify in a Single Week
• California Live
• Will a wider war in the Middle East push mortgage rates higher or lower?

Mortgage rates are high and housing inventory is tight, but some experts see the market’s deep freeze starting to thaw this spring. NAR’s Pending Homes Sales Index rose 1.6% in February from the month prior even as mortgage rates approached 7% by the end of the month. Existing inventory rose 5.9%—logging 1.07 million unsold homes at the end of February. However, there are still only 2.9 months of inventory at the current sales pace. Most experts consider a balanced market falling between four and six months. “[W]e’re definitely looking forward to a better housing market in 2024 as interest rates start to settle around 6% or even lower,” says Jewgieniew.

‘We expect Powell to make a hawkish pivot’—Fed meeting to headline busy week for global markets

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who led the court’s liberal flank in attacking the criminalization of homeless people, struck a similar note. The decriminalization of psychedelics has become a mainstream policy issue. Following legal reforms in Colorado and Oregon, the California legislature is once again debating a bill that would establish a regulated market of psychedelic therapies. There is a growing body of medical research showing psychedelic-assisted therapies can be tremendously effective at helping treat anxiety, severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and mental illness. Though the creation of international co-productions remains an extraordinary challenge, their number is growing, driven by the ambitions of major players such as public broadcaster RTVE and The Mediapro Studio.

Opinion: The Supreme Court just showed us that Trump is not incompetent. He’s a master of corruption

But if the housing market is thawing, it's not happening very quickly. In a news release issued Thursday, Freddie Mac said there are already signs that the growth in applications is slowing down. Redfin’s national metrics include data from 400+ U.S. metro areas, and is based on homes listed and/or sold during the period. The latest surge in prices reflects the heightened competition many home shoppers are facing. Consider, 60% of homes purchased in March sold within less than a month of hitting the market.

Finally, some healthy housing inventory growth

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.

Dana Robinson, a 46-year-old freelance writer, and Scott Rowden, a 44-year-old video editor, rent a Sherman Oaks apartment and want to buy a house in the neighborhood to build equity and give their 2-year-old daughter a backyard. On Monday, partly in anticipation of a more aggressive Fed, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage hit 6.18%, up from 5.5% the previous Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily. The consulting firm predicted home prices would then decline by the mid-single digits in both 2023 and 2024 as the Fed’s efforts to fight inflation push the economy into recession. Many analysts predict home prices will keep rising this year, but by a smaller percentage than they are rising now. Experts say there’s plenty of water available for new Californians if the trend of residents using less continues and accelerates into the future.

California Live

Home prices rose substantially during the pandemic housing boom as historically low mortgage rates and remote work fueled demand. Then inflation crept up until it couldn’t be ignored, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. That in turn pushed mortgage rates up (which seem to have peaked at a more than two-decade high), and sales plummeted to an almost 30-year low. But home prices haven’t fallen, not meaningfully, and not broadly because nobody is selling their house.

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Law that ended single-family zoning is struck down for five Southern California cities

Home Affordability Report, property data provider Attom found that median-priced single-family homes remain less affordable than the historical average in over 95% of U.S. counties. Though down from its 2023 high of 7.79%, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate in 2024 remains well over 6% amid rising home values. Sales of newly constructed single-family houses ticked down by a nominal 0.3% compared to January, but outpaced February 2023 sales by 5.9%, according to the latest U.S. Meanwhile, existing home prices continue to soar to unprecedented heights, reaching $384,500, which marks the eighth consecutive month of yearly price increases and a February median home price record. Existing-home sales came to life in February, shooting up 9.5% from the month before, according to the latest data from the NAR. At the same time, new single-family building permits ticked up 1% in February—the 13th consecutive monthly increase—according to the latest data from the U.S.

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The housing market might be turning around for frustrated would-be buyers as mortgage rates dip and listings rise, according to the real estate brokerage Redfin. The U.S. housing market is coming off a deep, 2-year sales slump triggered by a sharp rise in mortgage rates and a dearth of homes on the market. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes sank to a nearly 30-year low last year, tumbling 18.7% from 2022 as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage surged to a 23-year high of 7.79%, according to Freddie Mac. With interest rates still near record lows, we have to expect that they will increase at some point in the future.

The rule is set to take effect in mid-July, once the settlement receives judge approval. U.S. home prices declined in January for the third consecutive month due to high borrowing costs, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. But prices year-over-year jumped 6%—the fastest annual rate since 2022. As we head into peak home-buying season, signs of life have begun to spring up in the housing market. A Times analysis from 2022 found that stores in higher-income areas locked up fewer items even in places where property crime rates were higher, creating an additional burden for shoppers in certain neighborhoods.

RTVE’s latest title, “Weiss & Morales,” linking it with Spain’s Portcabo and Germany’s ZDF and ZDF Studios and Nadcon, has gone into production in the Canary Islands. The proposal to allow catastrophe models is part of Lara’s larger Sustainable Insurance Strategy announced last fall. Other elements include righting the finances of the state’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements plan, an insurer of last resort that has been deluged with new policyholders since insurers started pulling back from the market. He also wants to allow insurers to include in premiums the cost of reinsurance, which they purchase to protect themselves from disasters. Such a model could be used to set rates or benchmark privately developed models.

For many buyers and sellers alike, it’s beginning to sink in that “we’re not going back to three and four percent mortgage rates” anytime soon, he said. Even so, still-high mortgage rates and home prices amid historically low housing stock continue to put homeownership out of reach for many. If you are looking to leave LA or downsize from a single-family home to a condo, now may be a great time to sell. Under normal circumstances, I would try and talk you out of bidding up a house price in Los Angeles.

“A criminal record makes it harder to find and keep housing, it makes it harder to find and keep a job, it makes it harder to reconnect with family and community members who a person experiencing homelessness may be estranged from,” Donovan said. Local officials said the ruling was a disaster that expanded encampments, with homeless advocates arguing that people have a right to all sorts of materials in cold and inhospitable public spaces, including tents and fires. Debra Blake, a then-60-year-old homeless plaintiff who died during the litigation, wrote in a 2019 court declaration that she knew hundreds of people who slept outdoors in Grants Pass, about 40 miles north of the California border on the 5 Freeway.

Certain areas, and price points, are going to see an even higher percentage of homes selling for more than asking. There are a lot more people who are desperately trying to buy one-million-dollar homes than 100-million-dollar homes. The best home-purchasing advice I can give you is to buy the right house for you at the right time. If you own a home that you like and live in for the long-term, then most short-term market pressure on real estate shouldn’t matter because you likely won’t be forced to sell during what would likely be a temporary downturn.