Welcome to today’s roundup of real estate news, where we delve into significant developments across the U.S. housing market. From Governor Moore’s latest legislative efforts to make Maryland more affordable, to Governor Hochul’s ambitious housing deal in New York, and the ongoing debate about whether the housing market is on the brink of a crash—today’s stories provide a comprehensive view of the challenges and changes shaping the landscape. These updates not only reflect the dynamic nature of real estate but also highlight the critical issues of affordability and supply that continue to impact buyers and sellers nationwide. Dive deeper into each story to understand the nuances of these pivotal moments in housing policy and market trends.
Governor Moore Signs Housing Legislation to Make Maryland More Affordable
We’re available on the following channels.
How Much Housing Will Hochul’s New Deal Build? | THE CITY — NYC News
Gov. Kathy Hochul called the package of housing proposals approved by the Legislature Saturday as part of the state budget “a once in a lifetime housing deal.” Mayor Eric Adams said triumphantly that his administration had gotten everything it wanted as it tries to create an average of 50,000 new homes a year in hopes of achieving his moonshot goal of 500,000 units over the next decade. Key provisions offer a tax break for new developments that guarantee some affordable apartments, speed the conversion of obsolete office buildings to residential use, increase the number of apartments that can be built in a single building and let landlords invest in renovating vacant apartments. But each one of those elements contains restrictions and requirements that make their impact highly uncertain.
Is The Housing Market Going To Crash? | Bankrate
To the dismay of would-be homebuyers, property prices just keep rising. It seems nothing — not even some of the highest mortgage rates of the past two decades — can stop the continued climb of home prices. Prices increased once again in March, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which reports that median existing-home prices were up 4.8 percent over last year — the ninth month in a row of year-over-year jumps. In another reflection of ongoing increases, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index for January was up 6 percent from a year earlier.
So much for the now-quaint notion that the post-pandemic “housing recession” would reverse some of the outsized price gains in homes. The U.S. housing market had finally started slowing in late 2022, and home prices seemed poised for a correction. But a strange thing happened on the way to the housing market crash: Home values started rising again.
NAR data shows that median sale prices of existing homes are near record highs. March 2024’s median of $393,500 is off the all-time-high of $413,800, but it’s the highest March median on record. (Seasonal fluctuations in home prices typically make late spring the highest-priced time of the year — the all-time-high was reached in June 2022.)
Home prices have also risen more quickly than wages, a reality that intensifies affordability challenges, says Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Any time home prices outpace people’s incomes, that is not good,” Yun told reporters recently. The result is a squeeze on first-time buyers — but repeat buyers can rely on gains from the housing market and their stock portfolios to finance purchases, Yun says.
Home values held steady even as mortgage rates soared to 8 percent in October 2023, reaching their highest levels in more than 23 years. (They have since dipped, falling briefly below 7 percent before averaging 7.33 percent in Bankrate’s weekly survey released April 17.) The main culprit is a lack of housing supply. Inventories remain frustratingly tight, with NAR’s March data showing only a 3.2-month supply.
“You’re not going to see house prices decline,” says Rick Arvielo, head of mortgage firm New American Funding. “There’s just not enough inventory.” Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow, agrees about the supply-and-demand imbalance. She predicts home prices will keep rising in 2024 — welcome news for sellers but not so great for first-time buyers struggling to become homeowners. “We’re not in that space where things are suddenly going to be more affordable,” Olsen says.
In fact, the trend is quite the opposite. According to Realtor.com’s March 2024 Housing Market Trends Report, high mortgage rates have increased the monthly cost of financing the typical home (after a 20 percent down payment) by 2.9 percent since last year. That equates to $63 more in monthly payments than a buyer last March would have seen.
Taking all this into account, housing economists and analysts agree that any market correction is likely to be modest. No one expects price drops on the scale of the declines experienced during the Great Recession. There are still far more buyers than sellers, and that means a meaningful price decline can’t happen: “There’s just generally not enough supply,” says Mark Fleming, chief economist at title insurer First American Financial Corporation. “There are more people than housing inventory. It’s Econ 101.”
Want to learn more about the housing market? Read the full article on Bankrate.