Prices clearly peaked, and the YoY price increase in some places had gotten a bit silly. But don't a lot of cities still just have a lot less housing than they should because of decades of not building enough? And even the decline in prices is mostly about the higher mortgage rates?
Everyone refinanced to very low interest rates. If home prices drop and people default then that’s lots of exposure to potential negative equity in all those home loans.
I think the bubble is due to extremely high home prices. In my metro area, prices are up 70% since 2020. So a drop of 40% to correct to 2020 levels isn’t unheard of.
Personally, I think the price is structural adjustments as people shift to remote work and that makes different houses more valuable (suburbs and exurbs have really increased quite a bit).
> Personally, I think the price is structural adjustments as people shift to remote work and that makes different houses more valuable (suburbs and exurbs have really increased quite a bit).
To back up the idea that the price changes are mostly just about mortgage rates changing:
- In California, Redfin data shows that the peak for median sale price was in April 2022, at $839,100, and now we're at $706,000 for Feb 2023. Ooh, that looks like a >15% drop in less than a year!
- But FreddieMac shows that the average 30y fixed was 5% in mid April '22, and was 6.32% mid last month. The median home with an average mortgage was signing up to pay $4504/mo vs $4379/mo last month. That's a decline of roughly 2.8%
So it seems like home buyers today are willing to pay almost as much per month as they were at the price peak, which has drawn prices down.
I started to reply "How many of these loans are sub-prime ARMs though?" and then went and looked for the data myself. I can't tell if these ARMs are risky, but we're seeing an early-2000's-level number of people applying for them.
> “More borrowers continue to utilize ARMs to combat higher rates. The share of ARMs increased to 11% of overall loans and to 19% by dollar volume.” At the start of this year, when rates were still hovering near record lows, the ARM share was just 3% of all purchase applications. At 11% that is the highest share since March 2008.
> The ARM share of activity increased to 12.0 percent of total applications.
Now, my wife and I bought our current house on a 5/1 ARM that was capped at +-1%/year and I think 10% total. We then refi'd in April 2020 and got on a 30 year fixed. I'm not sure if new rules after 2008 require ARMs to have total/yearly caps or not, if they do then a bubble pop will likely hurt a lot less. If they don't, then we're likely 4-5 years out from another crash.
Who here has a mortgage that eventually got purchased by Fannie or Freddie? The lenders underwriting home loans hold them a grand total of a couple days before they get passed along.
The crisis this time is going to be to bank shareholders. Probably some pensions and retirement funds. And then consolidation, and fewer choices for the consumer. Eventually we will all bank at MorganChaseGoldmanWitterWellsSchwabFargoHamiltonMellonMerrillLynchPierceFennerReynoldsSmithSachs.
Australia is in DIRE need of reform - unfortunately we voted against Shorten's election plans in 2019 that would have dramatically reduced the upward pressure on housing prices
Anecdotal but I cannot afford to move back to the lower middle class regional town I grew up in, as there are 0 rentals and buying is minimum $800,000
My mother's place has gone from:
1990 - $100,000 AUD
2006 - $600,000 AUD
2021 - $1,200,000 AUD
The local council estimates we can only add 0.29% to the population YoY
My street going >60% up in price would disagree and I can't think of any other price that grew as fast in the last 2 years. Food and other things got slightly more expensive, but it doesn't seem comparable to the housing.
Prices clearly peaked, and the YoY price increase in some places had gotten a bit silly. But don't a lot of cities still just have a lot less housing than they should because of decades of not building enough? And even the decline in prices is mostly about the higher mortgage rates?