More Properties Listed, Supply Still Short
The recent pullback in mortgage rates is spurring more homeowners to put their homes up for sale, though the increases so far have been too modest to return the housing market’s inventory of available properties back to pre-pandemic levels.
The number of active listings, a tally of U.S. homes on the market that excludes those pending a finalized sale, climbed 4.9% to 714,176 in December from a year earlier, the biggest annual increase since June, according to data released this week by Realtor.com.
A big part of the increase was due to a 9.1% jump in new listings, or properties that made their market debut in December, which posted an annual increase for the second time after 17 months of declines.
As is typically the case, active listings declined in December from the previous month, falling 5.5%. But the drop was less than the typical decline of 6.8% to 13.2%, Realtor.com said.
While the pickup in home listings is a welcome development for prospective homebuyers, the housing market remains constrained with for-sale inventory still well below pre-pandemic levels.
Consider that active listings were down 30.9% in December compared to the same month in 2019, while new listings were down nearly 12%.
Housing economists expect that the average rate will continue to decline this year, though forecasts generally see it moving no lower than 6%.
That may not be enough to motivate many homeowners to sell, given that some two-thirds of U.S. homes have a mortgage with a rate under 4% and more than 90% have a rate below 6%.
That means the upcoming spring homebuying season is likely to favor sellers as homebuyers compete for a relatively limited number of homes for sale. (Florida Realtors)
And read these articles:
Why Mortgage Rates will fall in 2024
Transitory inflation? Recession? What else will forecasters get wrong?
More insurers coming to Florida
- Andrew Oliver, M.B.E., M.B.A.
Real Estate Advisor
Andrew.Oliver@Compass.com - AndrewOliverRealtor.com
m 617.834.8205
Is the U.S. Housing Market at a Crossroads?
Homes reached record prices in early 2022 – so is the current market a housing recession or just a market correction?
Here are some extracts from an article Market at the Crossroads on the Florida Realtors website, with my comments and links to recent articles at the end.
Is there a housing slowdown?
There is widespread consensus that the housing market has experienced a drastic drop-off in activity since its pandemic-prompted heights.
The housing market is “not like the volatile stock market, always going up and down; the housing market moves at a different, slower pace. “The market simply could not, and was never expected to, grow at that pace indefinitely,” Neda Navab, president of brokerage operations at real estate company Compass said. “Whether this trend will continue long enough for the market to enter a true ‘recession,’ or if this is simply the start of an expected ‘correction’ to historic norms, still remains to be seen.”
The case for a housing correction (more…)
Florida July Market Update in 4 minutes
This short video is an excellent summary of what is happening to the market overall in Florida.
And this is my recent overview of the market in Naples: Market returning to normal – well, mostly
And read these recent articles: (more…)
Florida Housing Market in 5 pictures
Here are the Florida Realtors’ slides for February 2022.
Single Family
Condos/Townhouses (more…)