It's A Highly Unusual Housing Market
It's a highly unusual housing market, with home prices hitting new records, but transaction activity at 2008-2010 levels and mortgage rates at 20-year highs. Here's my weekly update on national and local housing news - let me know if you'd like more information!
There has never been a year quite like the last 12 months. We have had rising interest rates, lack of inventory and pandemic related after effects. Locally, we are also looking at the effects of the writer and actor strikes which is creating another layer of challenges. Unemployment rose by 3.8% in August, up significantly in July and highest increase since February of 2022, indicating that the Fed policy is working. The Fed Chairman seemed to indicate, at the annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, that policy would remain focused on inflation, with a 2% target still in the mix, here is the full text. A pause is expected for September. It's hard to say how far they will take the rate increases, but, the further they increase rates the more it will deter existing homeowners from selling and deter buyers as they will have far less purchasing power.
Corelogic came out with it's annual forecast July 2023-July 2024 and they are predicting home prices to increase by 3.5% So what does this mean for us? One of the stats I like to look at are the mortgage delinquency rates. The good news is that, year over year, the delinquency rate has decreased by .3% to 2.6%.
Nationally the overall stats are showing that the number of homes for sale has decreased by 6.4% and that prices are up over last year with over 35% of homes taking price reductions. Still very low inventory levels locally, as compared to last year. Overall, have to agree with the assessment that prices will continue to go up if inventory continues at such low levels.
Check out the chart below..... Despite low inventories we are still looking at, mostly, lower to negative price gains for the rolling three month period.
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Single family home prices(median) for June 2023-August 2023:
| Glendale | + 6.6% |
| Burbank | + 4.2% |
| Toluca Lake* | - 32.2% |
| Pasadena | + 4.2% |
| Studio City | - 12.7% |
| Hollywood Hills* | - 5.9% |
| Valley Village | + 11.5% |
| Sherman Oaks | - 4.3% |
| Woodland Hills | - 3.7% |
are somewhat misleading
Weekly national mortgage rates for loans under $400,000, top credit scores:
| 30 yr. fixed rate | 7.18 | ||
| 15 yr. fixed rate | 6.51 | ||
