I wanted to reach out to you and say hi and see how you are doing? It has truly been a heck of a ride here these past few years with respect to real estate! I wanted to give you my take on this current market. I would have provided this a lot sooner but when we are right in the middle of so much volatility, one has to sit back and gather data before expressing their current take. I am going to try and keep this super simple to show you the WHY of how are real estate market is being affected and HOW it will affect you as a future buyer or a future seller.
Graph 1 (above) This is the catalyst to the interest rates for the 30-year fixed mortgage with Fannie or Freddie, backed loans and graphed for the last 5 years.
LET’S TALK RATES & HOME PRICES
Now being that I am a quantitative economics major from the Naval Academy, a licensed loan officer in the state of Washington for the past 15 years, and now a real estate agent in San Diego for 12 straight years I can truly depict and analyze this data and graphs that can also show me patterns and trends that lead to proper decisions.
So if you look at or overlay these 2 graphs (graph 1 above and graph 2 below):
- Notice they run at the same pattern. When the yield is up so will the interest rates for housing, credit cards, cars using loans.
- The past 4 weeks and the amount of volatility with the 10 yr yield and the 30 yr rate for mortgages.
- That they are actually starting to fall these past 20 days here as depicted by Graph 1 towards the end of the blue line
Graph 2 (above) are the actual 30-year fixed rates in the 5 years
WHAT DOES ALL THIS TELL ME
These 2 graphs clearly show me the price of loans have been increasing over the past 2 months on a consistent basis compared to the last 3 years (through Covid). This has caused the demand for purchasing homes to pull back immensely from the buyer market. This is best depicted in Graph 3.
Graph 3 (above) is the year over year home price growth nationwide
In the beginning of 2022 as well as the start of the Pandemic and the following 2 years, the 10 yr yield, the 30 year fixed were all historically low and thus the Average Median Home Price skyrocketed and the buyers felt this!!! Then when the FED (Jerome Powell) raised the rates purposely to offset the inflation of our weakening dollar, this created the highest payment coupled with the highest prices in homes. It all hit a wall in May of 2022!
WHAT DOES THIS ACTUALLY ALL MEAN TO A SELLER OR BUYER:
The result of this wall is best depicted with DAYS ON MARKET (graph 4 below) of active listings, as well as, NUMBER OF LISTINGS vs NUMBER OF SOLD LISTINGS (graph 5 below), as well as, PRICE LISTED vs PRICE SOLD (graph 6 below). The main reason for the surge in inventory is the Fear that the market has started to level. There were a ton of sellers in our market that made major decisions to transition through covid. Luckily the rates were low, and this intrigued all the buyers that pursued a purchase between Feb 2020 to Jan 2022. The data that is most compelling to me is the drastic surge in inventory compared to Covid Times as depicted in Graph 5 below. When the amount of inventory or perspective properties available skyrockets instantly, and the interest rates to buy these homes skyrockets together or coupled with this spike in supply…this creates a delay in the homes going under contract or a loss of demand.
Graph 4,5,6 (above) would truly motivate me as a buyer because this data clearly shows the market is shifting from any type of sellers’ market to an extreme buyers’ market! And it’s happening quickly!
TYING ALL THE DATA IN THAT POINT TO A FUTURE BUYERS’ MARKET
This “pull-back” in BUYER DEMAND created a pause in Loan applications for purchases. This means buying has stopped or halted quicker than anticipated. With Days on Market, I am only concerned with the last 1-2 months of data. Some areas experience this pull back differently and later so by look at the last 2 months of the Days on market or the Green dotted line and the uptick in the blue solid line of the sold properties took longer to sell.
**The past 14 days of days since the start of July is showing me the rates have leveled out with the 10 yr yield and the 30-year fixed and this leveling causes a normalization in the buyer’s demand and therefore the listings do not capture 100% of the listing price or over like the past 2 years have seen. Graph 6 (above) shows the percentage at the list price of 100% and what the final sold price compared to this ended with. As you can see in Summer of 2021 and the start of 2022 showed higher percentages of homes sold over the list price. Now you can see in the last 2 months since April 2022, this is drastically falling closer to a list price and sold price closing at the same number. The is price declining or leveling.
Consistency in rate and a slight decline in the price of the home sales compared to the listing price indicated this market is transitioning into a BUYER’S MARKET. Yes, the rates are higher than in the past 3 years, but from graph 2, you can see that this is where the 2017/2018 rates were. In other words, the past 3-4 years of these rates being lower, have caused $100,000s of value surge in the median. What I am seeing from Graph 3 is that finally with the 5-6 weeks of rising rates and the demand for buyers has pulled away, it finally caused the prices to LOWER OR LEVEL. Graphs 4,5,6 would truly motivate me as a buyer because this data clearly shows the market is shifting from any type of sellers’ market to an extreme buyers’ market! And it’s happening quickly!
