Monday's With Matthew • April 25, 2022

The Current State of the Housing Market

by Mike Esteb

The Current State of the Housing Market

"Hello there, I’m Windermere’s Chief Economist Matthew Gardner, and welcome to this month’s episode of Monday with Matthew. With home prices continuing to defy gravity, mortgage rates spiking, the Fed raising interest rates significantly, a yield curve that is just keeping its nose above water, and some becoming vocal about the possibility that we are going to enter a recession sooner rather than later, it’s not at all surprising that many of you have been asking me whether the housing market is going to pull back significantly, and a few of you have asked whether we aren’t in some sort of “bubble” again.

Because this topic appears to be giving many of you heartburn, I decided that it’s a good time to reflect on where the housing market is today and give you my thoughts on the impact of rising mortgage rates on what has been an historically hot market.

The Current State of the U.S. Housing Market

Home Sale Prices

A slide titled "Home Sale Prices" showing the U.S. media home sale prices from 1990 to 2022. From 1990 to 2006, there was a positive 142% change. From 2006 to 2012, there was a negative 33% change. And from 2012 to 2022, there has been a positive 1315 change, with the most recent U.S. median sale price shown at $357,300.

As usual, a little perspective. Between 1990 and the pre-bubble peak in 2006, home prices rose by 142%, which was a pretty impressive annual increase of 5.6% over a 16 1/2-year period. When the market crashed, prices dropped by 33%, but from the 2012 low to today, prices have risen by 131%, or at an even faster annual rate of 8.6% over a shorter period of time—10 years.

You may think that prices rising at an annual rate that exceeds the pace seen before the market crash is what has some brokers and home buyers concerned, but that really isn’t what has many people scared. It’s this.

Mortgage Rates in 2022

A slide titled "Mortgage Rates in 2022" showing the increase in 30-year fixed conforming mortgage rates between December 30, 2021 (3.11%) and April 14, 2022 (5%).

At the start of 2022, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was just a little above 3%. But, over a brief 15-week period, they have skyrocketed to 5%. This has led some to worry that the market is about to implode. Of course, nobody can say that the run-up in home prices hasn’t been phenomenal over the past few years, and it’s certainly human nature to think that “what goes up, must come down,” but is there really any reason to panic? I think not, and to explain my reasoning, let’s look back in time to periods when rates rose significantly and see how increasing mortgage rates impacted the marketplace.

Housing and Mortgage Markets During Times of Rising Rates

A slide titled "Housing & Mortgage Markets During Times of Rising Rates." Two extreme statistics are as follow: Between June 2005 and July 2006 there was a negative 32.3% change in housing starts and between October 1993 and December 1994 there was a negative 12.7% change in home sales.

This table shows seven periods over the past 30 years when mortgage rates rose significantly. On average, rates trended higher for just over a year before pulling back, and the average increase was 1.4%. But now look at how it impacted home prices: it really didn’t. On average, during these periods of rising financing costs, home prices still rose by just over 5%. Clearly, not what some might have expected. But there were some negatives from mortgage rates trending higher, and these came in the form of lower sales in all but one period and new housing starts also pulled back.

So, if history is any indicator, the impact of the current jump in mortgage rates is likely to be seen in the form of lower transactions rather than lower prices. And this makes sense. Although rising financing costs puts additional pressure on housing affordability, what people don’t appear to think about is that mortgage rates actually tend to rise during periods of economic prosperity. And what does a flourishing economy bring? That’s right. Rising wages. Increasing incomes can certainly offset at least some of the impacts of rising mortgage rates.

Static Equilibrium Analysis – 1/3

A slide titled "Static Equilibrium Analysis" showing that the P&I payment would be $1,365 for a $357,300 home with a 4% mortgage rate, using the February 2022 U.S. median sale price. This assumes the buyer has put down 20% on the home.

To try and explain this, I’m using the median US sale price in February of this year, assuming a 20% down payment and the mortgage rate of 4%. And you can see that the monthly P&I payment would be $1,365. But as mortgage rates rise, and if buyers wanted to keep the same monthly payment, then they would have to buy a cheaper home. Using a rate of 5%, a buyer could afford a home that was 9% cheaper if they wanted to keep the payment the same as it would have been if rates were still at 4%.

But, as I mentioned earlier, an expanding economy brings higher wages, and this is being felt today more than usual, given the worker shortage that exists and businesses having to raise compensation. Average weekly wages have risen by over five-and-a-half percent over the past year—well above the pre-pandemic average of two-and-a-half percent. Although increasing incomes would not totally offset rising mortgage rates, it does have an impact.

Static Equilibrium Analysis – 2/3

A slide titled "Static Equilibrium Analysis" showing what home buyers would be able to afford at different mortgage rates, using the U.S. average household income of $70,611, assuming they've put 20% of their gross income down for the down payment. At 4%, they could afford a home just under $360,000 and at 5%, they could afford a home at $321,038.

To demonstrate this, let’s use the U.S. average household income of $70,611. Assuming that they’ve put aside 20% of their gross income for a down payment, they could afford a home priced just under $360,000 if mortgage rates were at 4%. As rates rise—and assuming that their income doesn’t—their buying power is reduced by over 10%, or just over $38,000.

Static Equilibrium Analysis – 3/3

A follow up to the "Static Equilibrium Analysis" slide showing that if the average income were raised to $74,848, the buyer would be able to afford a home of $340,302 at a 5% mortgage rate.

But if we believe that incomes will rise, then the picture looks very different. Assuming wages rise by 6%, their buying power drops by just 5% if rates rose from 4% to 5%, or a bit less than $19,000.

Although rates have risen dramatically in a short period, because they started from an historic low, the overall impacts are not yet very significant. If history is any indicator, mortgage rates increasing are likely to have a more significant impact on sales, but a far smaller impact on prices.

But there are other factors that come into play, too. Here I’m talking about demand. The only time since 1968 that home prices have dropped on an annualized basis was in 2007 through 2009 and in 2011, and this was due to a massive increase in the supply of homes for sale. When supply exceeds demand, prices drop.

So, how is it different this time around? Well, we know that the supply glut that we saw starting to build in mid-2006 was mainly not just because households were getting mortgages that, quite frankly, they should never have gotten in the first place, but a very large share held adjustable rate mortgages which, when the fixed interest rate floated, they found themselves faced with payments that they could not afford. Many homeowners either listed their homes for sale or simply walked away.

Although it’s true that over the past two or so months more buyers have started taking ARMs as rates rose, it’s not only a far smaller share than we saw before the bubble burst, but down payments and credit quality remained far higher than we saw back then.

So, if we aren’t faced with a surge of inventory, I simply don’t see any reason why the market will see prices pull back significantly. But even if we do see listing activity increase, I still anticipate that there will be more than enough demand from would-be buyers. I say this for several reasons, the first of which is inflation.

What a lot of people aren’t talking about is the proven fact that owning real estate is a significant hedge against rising inflation. You see, most buyers have a mortgage, and a vast majority use fixed-rate financing. This is the hedge because even as consumer prices are rising, a homeowner’s monthly payments aren’t. They remain static and, more than that, their monthly payments actually become lower over time as the value of the dollar diminishes. Simply put, the value of a dollar in—let’s say 2025—will be lower than the value of a dollar today.

But this isn’t the only reason that inflation can actually stimulate the housing market. Home prices historically have grown at a faster pace than inflation.

Hedge Against Inflation

A slide titled "Hedge Against Inflation" showing a line graph of the average annual inflation and change in median home price from 1969 to 2021. While the average annual inflation fluctuates between 1% and 5% for most of the chart except for the mid-70s and early-80s, the change in median home price fluctuates between 25% in the late-70s to roughly negative 12% in 2009.

This chart looks at the annual change in total CPI going back to 1969. Now let’s overlay the annual change in median U.S. home prices over the same time period. Other than when home prices crashed with the bursting of the housing bubble, for more than fifty years home price growth has outpaced inflation. And this means we are offsetting high consumer prices because home values are increasing at an even faster rate.

But inflation has additional impacts on buyers. Now I’m talking about savings. As we all know, the interest paid on savings today is pretty abysmal. In fact, the best money market accounts I could find were offering interest rates between 0.5% and 0.7%. And given that this is significantly below the rate of inflation, it means that dollars saved continue to be worth less and less over time while inflation remains hot.

Now, rather than watching their money drop in value because of rising prices, it’s natural that households would look to put their cash to work by investing in assets where the return is above the rate of inflation—meaning that their money is no longer losing value—and where better place to put it than into a home.

Housing as a Hedge Against Inflation

A slide titled "Housing as a Hedge Against Inflation" showing that most home buyers finance their purchase at a fixed-rate of interest, which is not susceptible to inflation. Mortgage payments are fixed, therefore as incomes rise, the payments actually become cheaper.

So, the bottom line here is that inflation supports demand from home buyers because:

Most are borrowing at a fixed rate that will not be impacted by rising inflation
Monthly payments are fixed, and these payments going forward become lower as incomes rise, unlike renters out there who continue to see their monthly housing costs increase
With inflation at a level not seen since the early 1980s, borrowers facing 5% mortgage rates are still getting an amazing deal. In fact, by my calculations, mortgage rates would have to break above 7% to significantly slow demand, which I find highly unlikely, and
If history holds true, home price appreciation will continue to outpace inflation

Demand appears to still be robust, and supply remains anemic. Although off the all-time low inventory levels we saw in January, the number of homes for sale in March was the lowest of any March since record keeping began in the early 1980’s.

But even though I’m not worried about the impact of rates rising on the market in general, I do worry about first-time buyers. These are households who have never seen mortgage rates above 5% and they just don’t know how to deal with it! Remember that the last time the 30-year fixed averaged more than 5% for a month was back in March of 2010!

And given the fact that these young would-be home buyers have not benefited from rising home prices as existing homeowners have, as well as the fact that they are faced with soaring rents, making it harder for them to save up for a down payment on their first home, many are in a rather tight spot and it’s likely that rising rates will lower their share of the market.

So, the bottom line as far as I am concerned is that mortgage rates normalizing should not lead you to feel any sort of panic, and that current rates are highly unlikely to be the cause of a market correction.

And I will leave you with this one thought. If you agree with me that a systemic drop in home prices has to be caused by a significant increase in supply, and that buyers who are currently taking out adjustable-rate mortgages are more qualified, and therefore able to manage to refinance their homes when rates do revert at some point in the future, then what will cause listings to rise to a point that can negatively impact prices?

It’s true that a significant increase in new home development might cause this, but that is unlikely. And as far as existing owners are concerned, I worry far more about a prolonged lack of inventory. I say this for one very simple reason and that is because a vast majority off homeowners either purchased when mortgage rates were at or near their historic lows, or they refinanced their current homes when rates dropped.

And this could be the biggest problem for the market. Even if rates don’t rise at all from current levels, I question how many owners would think about selling if they were to lose the historically low mortgage rates that they have locked into. It is quite possible that for this one reason, we may experience a tight housing market for several more years.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about this particular topic, please do reach out to me but, in the meantime, stay safe out there and I look forward to visiting with you all again next month.

Bye now."

“Fast-rising home prices? Check. Out-of-control bidding wars? Check. Investors flooding the market? Check.

Over the past two years, the nation has watched worriedly as home prices seemed to hit a new record high every month. Many buyers have been offering six figures over asking prices to snag properties. It’s been uncomfortably reminiscent of the runup to the housing bust that blew up the world’s economy roughly 15 years ago.

As the market has progressively heated to a boiling point, most real estate experts swore up and down that the housing market wasn’t in a bubble. Mortgage interest rates were so low, in the unprecedented mid-2% range, that buyers could afford the inflated prices, they said. Lenders were no longer making bad mortgages that could trigger another foreclosure crisis. And this time around, a housing shortage that has reached crisis proportions has resulted in many more buyers than properties for sale—just the opposite of the 2007–08 pre-crash conditions. This market could support the frenzy, they explained.

But that might not be so true anymore with mortgage rates soaring to their highest point in more than a decade, hitting 5% last week as they continue their upward march. Many of those same experts are now warning the housing market might be approaching a bubble—if it isn’t in one already.

There’s only so much that homebuyers can afford before they’re priced out of the market. In March, when rates surpassed the 4% mark, the number of buyers applying for mortgages fell 5%, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Nationally, buyers are paying about 42% more in their monthly mortgage payments for the same house today than they did a year ago. The potent combo of rising home prices, up 14% year over year in March, and escalating mortgage rates, which rose nearly 2 percentage points, has added hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month to those mortgage bills.

And that’s on top of what potential buyers are spending on everything else. Rents are up about 17% year over year, inflation is running at 8.5%, and gas prices rose about 40%. Many folks are simply tapped out.

How can the system handle skyrocketing home prices, mortgage rates, and rental prices simultaneously? Some believe it can’t.

“We’re not in a housing bubble just yet—but we’re skating close to one if prices continue rising at the current pace,” says George Ratiu, manager of economic research at Realtor.com®. “Some markets will see a correction if mortgage rates continue to rise, in which sales will drop and prices will follow.

But “I don’t expect the market to see a huge crash or spike in foreclosures,” he adds.

Ratiu anticipates prices could fall 5% to 15%, depending on the local real estate market. Areas with struggling economies without the good jobs needed to attract new residents, such as the Rust Belt, would likely see larger price declines. Prices are already tumbling in places like Toledo, OH, and Rochester, NY.

But buyers expecting some pricing relief will likely be disappointed. Even if prices do fall, homebuyers will still be saddled with higher monthly mortgage payments. Rates have risen so much, so quickly, that they will likely more than make up for lower prices, costing homebuyers even more money.

And more desirable communities with plenty of high-paying tech and manufacturing jobs could see prices still continue to rise.

“You’re now starting to see people stretch their budgets,” says Ali Wolf, chief economist of building consultancy Zonda. “The market looks more frothy than it did just six months ago.”

Prices are likely to continue growing—for now

Buyers shouldn’t expect a big drop in prices anytime soon.

It’s going to take a little time for higher mortgage rates, which averaged 5% in the week ending April 14, to have their full impact on the housing market. (Mortgage rate data is from Freddie Mac.) And in the near term, many more buyers are likely to rush in and offer as much as they can to secure homes before rates rise even further.

(Mortgage interest rates are expected to keep going up this year as they’re influenced by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s short-term interest rate. The Fed plans to raise its rates several more times this year in an effort to curb high inflation. That’s expected to push mortgage rates up.)

Home price growth is beginning to slow a little. Median list prices were up 14.9% over the prior year in the week ending April 9, according to the most recent Realtor.com data. While that sounds high, it’s a little lower than the 15.3% annual price increases of the past two weeks.

It won’t drop by much more until buyers realize just how much these higher mortgage rates will eat into their budgets and start making lower offers or dropping out of the market entirely. If they see prices eventually dip, they might wait to see if they go down even further, which could lead to just that occurring.

“People go from ‘I need to lock in before it goes any higher’ to ‘Honey, we can’t afford this anymore,’” says Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst in the San Francisco Bay Area for the real estate brokerage Compass.

Then it needs to sink in for home sellers that they might not be able to get as much as they wanted for their residences.

“Sellers are pricing homes based on the market three months ago—not the market of today’s interest rates,” says Ratiu.“We’re in a period of transition where sellers are looking at the lack of homes on the market and current, record-high prices and are assuming the market will continue like this.

“I’m expecting to see price adjustments as we move into the spring and the summer,” he continues. “Sales will drop before prices adjust.”

Is the U.S. in a housing bubble?

While home sellers and buyers are clamoring to know whether the housing market is in bubble territory, real estate experts haven’t yet reached a consensus.

“The housing market has become bubbly,” says economist Enrique Martínez-García of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He was one of the authors of a recent report finding signs of a housing bubble in the real estate market. “This looks a lot like the housing boom that we saw prior to the 2007–09 financial crisis.”

Others, like Carlisle and Wolf, aren’t as sure. However, all three believe there could be a correction in the housing market, which would lead to falling—but not crashing—prices.

It’s like “air escaping an over-pressurized tire through a very small puncture. The tire is not going flat quickly, but it will get slowly softer,” Carlisle says.

Martínez-García anticipates the double-digit price growth experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic could slow to about 2% a year. But he warns that corrections between 5% and 10% “are not completely out of the question.”

A correction is very different than a bust in that it’s not a huge, immediate drop that affects the whole nation at once. And a correction doesn’t have to be a very large price decrease. It could just be a few percentage points as the market cools off and adjusts to higher rates that cost buyers hundreds of dollars more each month.

“A universal drop in home prices across the entire the country is rare,” says Wolf. However, “we need to be realistic that prices could eventually come down a bit.”

The last bust was precipitated by shady loans that ballooned in size after a few years. Many homeowners couldn’t afford the higher payments, so they defaulted on their mortgages and their homes fell into foreclosure. This resulted in cheap homes flooding the market at the same time that the economy imploded, scores were laid off, and there just weren’t enough folks who wanted to purchase them. So prices plummeted, falling about 30% by some estimates.

The market looks very different this time around. There are many more buyers than homes for sale. And another foreclosure crisis seems unlikely as those riskier loans no longer exist. The vast majority of homeowners locked in fixed-rate loans that don’t result in monthly payments very suddenly surging. So unless there is another recession followed by high unemployment, they’re much less likely to be in danger of losing their homes.

And not everyone believes prices will ebb.

“What causes home prices to fall is being swamped [with homes for sale],” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. He expects prices will eventually flatten out and stay put for the next few years. “[Instead] we’re at record low record levels of supply.”

There will also likely be buyers as well as investors who can afford the higher rates, or are buying in cash, who will keep the housing market strong.

“Financially, many buyers are in a position to still commit to buying a home,” says Ratiu. “The main challenge is from one week to another they’re watching mortgage payments jump up hundreds of dollars a month. It’s bound to be discouraging.””