Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather has made her predictions on the state of the housing market in 2022.

Fairweather forecasts that balance will return to the market next year, but not after a scramble to snatch up homes with buyers taking advantage of low rates who will deplete the supply in the first half of 2002. In the second half, new construction will boost sales slightly, as there will be 1% more sales than in 2021, and by the close of 2022, home price growth will slow to 3%.

Some of Fairweather’s for 2022 are as follows

Prediction #1: Mortgage rates will rise and prices will drop
Prediction #2: New listings will hit decade-long high, yet inventory issues will linger
Prediction #3: Rents will continue to ascend and rise by 7%
Prediction #4: Homebuyers will relocate to more affordable cities
Prediction #5: People will relocate to places that align with their politics
Prediction #6: There will be a renewed interest in condos

Click here to read more details about each prediction! 

ATTOM, curator of the nation’s premier property database, today released its third-quarter 2021 U.S. Home Sales Report, which shows that profit margins on median-priced single-family home and condo sales across the United States jumped to 47.6 percent – the highest level since the end of the Great Recession a decade ago.

The report indicates a  typical home sale across the country during the third quarter of 2021 generated a profit of $100,178 while the national median home price hit a record.

Cash sales at a six-year high! Nationwide, all-cash purchases accounted for 34 percent of all single-family house and condo sales in the third quarter of 2021, the highest level since the first quarter of 2015. The third-quarter 2021 number was up from 33.2 percent in the second quarter of 2021 and from 21.4 percent in the third quarter of last year.

Click here to read more about profit margins and home ownership tenure. 

Redfin reports that one third of homes sold in the four weeks went under contract within seven days of hitting the market. The rate has been on the rise for the past six weeks, which is unusual for this time of year when the market typically slows down.

Experts assume the market is heating up due to steady homebuyer demand, and this is proven by the fact home tours are up twice as much from January as they were this time of year in 2019. Still, homes for sale remain few and far between.

“Homes continue to sell quicker and quicker,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “There are still plenty of homebuyers lying in wait who missed out during the Spring frenzy and they are snatching up homes quickly. Now those homes are selling for near-record prices. The housing market will likely stay hot until mortgage rates rise substantially.”

Key Takeaways:

• One third of homes sold in the past four weeks went under contract within seven days of hitting the market.
• 45% of homes that went under contract accepted an offer within the first two weeks on the market.

Read more about days on market and inventory here. 

The median home price just rose above $400,000 nationally for the first time ever!

The median U.S. home price just passed $400,000 for the first time ever, according to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

In the third quarter the median home price hit $404,700, jumping nearly 13% since third quarter of 2020, when the median sales price was $358,700.

A recent note from Goldman Sachs states home prices could rise another 16% by the end of next year, and the latest forecast by Fannie Mae, median home prices are expected to rise another 7.9% between Q4 2021 and Q4 2022.

“The housing shortage has contributed meaningfully to the record pace of home price appreciation we are currently experiencing,” Morgan Stanley strategists wrote in August. “While the magnitude of the shortage described above means it is unlikely that we will find ourselves with an excess of supply at any point in the near future, the pace at which supply is contracting has slowed.”

Read the rest of the article from yahoo!finance here.

The latest edition of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed that home prices increased 19.7% from a year ago in July, marking the fourth consecutive month of record growth in the more than 30-year history of the index.

“The last several months have been extraordinary not only in the level of price gains, but in the consistency of gains across the country,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P DJI, in the report.
The big picture: The fast pace of home-price appreciation the market is now seeing is sure to continue to draw comparisons to the housing bubble back in the early-to-mid 2000s that — when it burst — largely formed the basis for the Great Recession. But analysts warn that the situation is very different right now.

“This market is rooted in much different (and far less dangerous) fundamentals,” Robert Kavcic, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a research note.

The last housing bubble was driven by the subprime mortgage boom, but regulations imposed since then mean that lenders must ensure a borrower’s ability to pay back any loan they receive. Instead, this time home prices are rising because of the short supply of homes for sale across the country, which is increasing competition for properties amid high levels of demand.

What they’re saying: “While late summer indicators suggest some buyer fatigue, home-price growth is likely to remain in double digits through the remainder of 2021,” said CoreLogic deputy chief economist Selma Hepp.

Click here to read the entire article

Why? Lower lumber prices and strong housing demand! 

According the the National Associations of Home Builders, Builders are enjoying some reprieve from easing material costs in a still-strong housing market, where home prices continue to march higher. 

“The single-family building market has moved off the unsustainably hot pace of construction of last fall and has reached a still hot but more stable level of activity,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said in a statement.

Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for 35 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months. The report also showed that current sales conditions and prospective buyer traffic advanced. At the same time, sales expectations for the next six months remained unchanged.

Read the full article here.