“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.
Whenever a central bank moves from monetary easing to monetary tightening, there’s going to be an impact on a rate-sensitive sector like real estate. That impact, of course, is going to be even greater when monetary tightening comes after the asset class—residential real estate—spiked 43% in just over two years. Powell admitted that much in June. However, Powell was noncommittal as to whether the rate shock would push home prices lower.
Fast forward to September, and we no longer need to question if the housing “reset” will affect home prices. Back in June, the U.S. housing market was still just in the early innings of a sharp drop in housing activity. Since, we’ve seen housing activity, including home sales and home construction levels, go much lower. But as data rolls in for August, we now have clear evidence that the housing market downturn has moved beyond that first stage (i.e. a sharp drop in housing activity) and into the second stage (i.e. falling home prices).
“The longer that [mortgage] rates stay elevated, our view is that housing is going to continue to feel it and have this reset mode. And the affordability resetting mechanism right now that has to happen is on [home] prices. And so there are a lot of markets across the country where we’re forecasting that home prices are going to fall double-digits,” Rick Palacios Jr., head of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, tells Fortune.
Let’s take a deeper look at the three elements that’ll shift as we move into the second stage of the housing market downturn.
1. The home price correction is spreading.
As mortgage rates spiked—going from 3.2% to 6.3% this year—industry insiders knew it’d cause a sharp contraction in housing activity. However, many housing bulls thought it wouldn’t pull prices down. In March, Zillow went as far as to predict another 17.8% jump in home prices over the coming year.
It’s clear that housing bulls got it wrong. Among the 148 regional housing markets tracked by John Burns Real Estate Consulting, 98 housing markets have seen home values fall from their 2022 peaks. Just 50 markets remains at their peak.
In 11 markets, the Burns Home Value Index* has already dropped by more than 5%. That includes a 8.2% drop in San Francisco home values. While it’s common for median list prices to drop around this time of year, it’s not common for home values or “comps” to fall because of seasonality. Simply put: The home price correction is sharper—and more widespread—than previously thought.
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Source: https://fortune.com/2022/09/18/housing-market-downturn-moves-into-second-stage-falling-home-prices/
