[vbtemp]

I just got an update from my realtor that, compared to 2021, houses are now getting 5-10 offers instead of 10-20. Every open house I go to is packed and has an offer deadline at noon the day after (they aren't bluffing - it goes straight to under contract the next day). It's impossible to have any contingencies - even home inspection. Most are going for $50-$100K over asking. This is even with 7% interest rates, the stock market down 20% and tens of thousands of layoffs in my relatively tech (and Amazon) heavy area. The rental market is so tight - there's basically nothing on the market and the few dilapidated homes that go for rent are between $5-7k/mo. And this is late-March 2023.

[jeffbee]

In the 90s it was typical for a house to be on the market for 3-6 months before selling. Sellers generally received 1 offer.

Currently the nationwide days-on-market is still way below long-term historical norms and even below recent history. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEDDAYONMARUS

[lallysingh]

Part of it is the web. Buyers are looking at easily 10x the number of homes they used to, if you include all the ones they look at online.

They have a much better idea of what's available and what's a good match for what they want.

[pxeboot]

This is huge! I looked at every home listed on Zillow in my area for months before checking out 2 in person and submitting an offer on 1, which was thankfully accepted.

[arcticbull]

That was before the major housing shortage. The US is short about 6M homes by some measure [2], and the Bay Area is short a staggering quantity all by itself, so much so it has its own Wikipedia article. This remains the fault of onerous zoning rules and NIMBYs. [1]

[edit] No supply + high demand = prices go up. Higher interest rates only help at the margins because it doesn't actually change the demand factor which is that the humans in America need a place to live, and the more they make, the more they can afford to pay. And it certainly doesn't change the supply factor!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/america-is-short-more-than-5...

[Optimal_Persona]

FWIW in my East Bay neighborhood, I'm noticing in the last couple months it's taking closer to a week (rather than a day or 2) for "Coming Soon" real estate signs to change to "Sale Pending".

[madengr]

The most popular city, according to Zillow, is Prairie Village, KS.

https://www.zillow.com/research/most-popular-city-2022-31925...

This is about 1 mile from where I live in Overland Park, KS. PV is all single family homes with near zero apartments. Of course the city is trying to re-zone to put in higher density housing, and the population is vehemently opposed to it; I don't blame them. People move there for that reason. Higher density leads to more crime and other frustrations. People learned their lesson from the pandemic.

[UtopiaPunk]

Why would higher population density lead to higher crime rates? Do you have a source for that?

Poverty and general desperation leads to higher crime rates as people resort illegal means to get by. And that's what happens when there is not enough housing for people.

In the United States, we have a whole bunch of terrible housing policies, so maybe people are conflating density for poverty. But you can find many examples across Europe and Asia where there is little correlation between density and crime.

[Kye]

It makes a kind of intuitive sense. If a certain % of human interactions are crime, and you create circumstances where there are more interactions (packed night club, large convention, dense city, etc), you could expect more of all kinds of interactions including crime. Whether that's how it works in reality is another question.

[arcticbull]

See this is exactly what I'm talking about.

- "I want affordable housing!"

- "Hm, ok, how about we build new houses in the places people want to live, increasing supply to meet demand"

- "NOT LIKE THAT"

It's just like the "no take only throw" dog meme.

If you don't want to live next to other people, buy the land around you. If you can't afford the land around you, move further away. There's no reason your tastes should dictate what I can do with my property. I'm sorry, I thought this was America.

[jldugger]

> In the 90s it was typical for a house to be on the market for 3-6 months before selling. Sellers generally received 1 offer.

I wonder if there's been a material shift in who is making offers that won't revert to 90s behavior. Specifically, investment firms specializing in single family housing, who might have more incentives to make a lot of lowball offers and not worry too much whether they win or lose a specific bid.

Obviously you have imitators like Zillow trying to edge in as well, and step back after taking heavy losses, so its hard to say for sure where the new equilibrim will end up at.

[VirusNewbie]

I worry about exactly this. For every house an investment company buys, how many did they bid on which drove the price up?

[gizmo686]

Prices are set on the margin. Loosing bids have relatively little effect.

[jldugger]

Yea, I doubt they're moving prices much, but if people are using "offers recieved" as a metric...

[zer00eyz]

> Specifically, investment firms specializing in single family housing

I dont think I have seen good data that includes or calls out "investors" rather than "investment firms" I suspect that a lot of property ends up in the hands of individuals be it a vacation home, rental, air BB or flip.

[jedberg]

Interest rates in the 90s started in double digits and ended just below that. Also things that weren't mortgages (like cars) still had double digit interest. In 1999 I paid 13% interest for my car.

[xirdstl]

That must be specific to your market. That's not what I'm seeing in the Denver area, speaking as someone who has been casually looking for a house for over a year.

As soon as interest rates started rising, conditions went from what you describe, to, in a lot of cases, houses sitting weeks or months on the market. They go through, sometimes, multiple prices drops before going under contract.

I'm speaking specifically of homes that are in the range of those I'm considering purchasing, so maybe it doesn't apply to the overall market. For me, though, it is now much more of a buyer's market than it was a year ago.

[vbtemp]

I observed that happening for about a 6-8 week period in Oct-Nov-Dec 2022, then the party returned like it was 2021 all over again.

[rednerrus]

January 15th the slowdown was over in my market and now it's back to red hot.

[xirdstl]

That's good to know. I'm hoping those conditions don't come back here for awhile.

Getting into spring, I could see more people start looking again, with some pent-up demand not met from last year.

[AviationAtom]

That's because people are still not shedding the mentality of hoping to get top dollar. The market is going back in the buyer's direction. You need to be looking at recent comparable sales and pricing at or below surrounding current inventory if you want to move it quick. The mania did a number on people's perception of how the housing market should work. It will pick back up just as soon as the Fed officially backs off on rate increases, or even makes a slight cut, likely soon here.

[subsubzero]

I'm near you in Boulder area and I am seeing the same thing, huge drop in interest on houses in the market, last year places would get under contract within a week, now its houses sitting on the market for weeks and even months. I talked to our realtor(we are planning on moving again for a work related job) and she said average days on the market has doubled from last year in the Boulder metro area.

[abakker]

I'm in Boulder, too, and you can't ignore the "housing stock" problem here. There are a lot of crap houses in boulder that really need to be demolished. A late 90s house on my street sold in 1 day over asking, while an '87 house with a mid aughts renovation has been sitting fort 6 months. They were priced very differently relative to quality. I think what's happening here is not that the market has cooled overall, but is reflecting the vast annoyance that is boulder's building department, mixed with bad housing stock.

[agloe_dreams]

I would say, even further, here in the rust belt there is a whole other problem:

Inventory is gone. Not low. Gone. In the 45 mile radius we are looking in for an area with a pop of ~100,000, at houses under $350k (90% of listings)...there are weeks with ZERO listings.

This has lead to an insane situation where offers end up way over asking but there are so few comps that virtually all FHA is back out, not because of issues with the offer but because the appraisal issue: no house actually apprises near the price it goes for.

If you take a look at Zillow, most houses that sold last in 2019 after a renovation, with zero changes since, are listing at $330k. This has crunched the rental market as one would expect. Rental prices, in absolutely a low cost of living area have multiplied overnight from ~$700 to $1500+. I know most in this area are absolutely not paid like us so I'm pretty sure the area is about to hit a wall. One might expect a market to limit itself as homes that cost too much wont sell..but the other side of it is that I think we are getting to a flexible point of 'well everyone needs a home', I mean...is this a housing bubble coming? When that bubble pops, what happens to all the people with $350K loans on houses that are back down $200K?

[gautamdivgi]

I think that’s the downside of raising interest rates. Obviously I’m no economist, but if rates are high and I’ve already got a home I will not move. If people don’t move inventory is low and needs to be built. High interest rates probably put a crimp on new buildout. Just my thoughts.

[sangnoir]

Homeowners sometimes die, get divorced or have to move to a different area. Number of sales will go down, but not to zero. The prices of those sold due to exigencies will drop because of inflation.

[TheMagicHorsey]

I left the Bay Area in 2020 and started working remotely because I didn't want to enter the real estate market at the top, right before a crash.

I've never believed in doing something just because everyone else thinks its the default thing to do. Putting 1.5M to 2M into a small average house didn't make sense to me when that is enough money to retire in many different beautiful places in the world.

So I left. Switched jobs and started working remotely. I now live in a MCOL area and things are about 30% cheaper than the Bay Area. Better schools. Nicer environment. More diversity (including economic diversity). More access to activities (like gymnastics) for my kids at a reasonable price. More free time.

I make a little less money in cash. And a lot less money in equity. But all in all its a better life.

I hope more people open their eyes and realize these tech hotspots are actually hell.

[zeroonetwothree]

I think that critiques of the Bay Area are overstated (probably because of cognitive dissonance). Yes, it's extremely expensive, but it's also very nice. If you can afford it I don't think there's any inherent reason to expect to like anywhere else more. Of course if you can't afford it then, yes, you should probably leave, but that's not some crazy revelation.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

I found Raleigh NC area nicer than Bay Area, more greenery, easier traffic. Yes, more boring, but you can experience real redneck rodeos ...

[rajup]

> I hope more people open their eyes and realize these tech hotspots are actually hell.

Wouldn’t that make the other currently nice places hell again :^)

[ianceicys]

It's a good thing that there SO many MORE nice places... See Montana\Idaho plenty of room, plenty of broadband (even FIBER).

[lazide]

You bet!

[0xffff2]

I'm curious where you live that you find more diversity? I also moved out of the bay in 2020, have lived a few places since and the diversity of the bay area is pretty much the only thing I miss.

[cudgy]

Diversity in the bay area? Isn’t it mostly non-religious liberal Democrats?

[0xffff2]

Yeah, but at least they aren't all white. Where I live now is also mostly non-religious liberal Democrats, but they all think ranch dressing is spicy.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

What market?

Anecdotally, I follow many smaller markets in the Midwest and the South (plus Chicago). I wouldn't call it a buyer's market anywhere. But I'm not seeing anything like this.

I also have a few friends shopping on the East coast - and they're in a similar situation. It's not a buyer's market. But also not crazy.

My understanding was that The Bay, SoCal, and Seattle had massively slowed down. So I'm just wondering where this could be - or if things have recently turned around a lot.

Maybe my info is just bad...

[jedberg]

The house around the corner from me in Cupertino just sold. It's 1700sq ft on a small lot, and they were asking $3M for it. It sold for $3.2M four days after the open house. It sold so quickly they cancelled the second open house. Apparently they got 20+ offers.

So at least here in Cupertino, things are still nuts.

[subsubzero]

Cupertino is a unique case as you have extremely rich Chinese investors as well as apple HQ in that city. Also it is known to have the best schools in the bay area besides Palo Alto. But yeah totally crazy nonetheless.

[jedberg]

Interestingly only 10% of Apple employees live in Cupertino. And we actually don't have many foreign investors, Chinese or otherwise, as most houses are owner-occupied. But you're right about the schools!

[cryptonector]

$3.2M for a measly 1700sq ft?! Nuts. You can have a bigger, probably better house near the new Apple campus in Austin -walking distance, through a beautiful park no less!- for $600k or $700k.

[jedberg]

You pay $700k for the house and $2.5M for the weather, stable power grid, and lower taxes (yes, people in Cupertino pay lower overall taxes than people in Austin).

[tfehring]

> people in Cupertino pay lower overall taxes than people in Austin

Only because most people who can afford to buy in Cupertino aren't paying for it with earned income, right? Google tells me a $2.5M mortgage has minimum payments of $230k a year, anyone who makes enough to afford that is probably paying at least $50k/year in CA state income tax, on top of ~$25k in property taxes. Austin has high property taxes but I don't see them coming anywhere close to that, and the sales tax is lower.

[jedberg]

Property taxes are a lot lower in California because of Prop 13. For a new buyer, they are about the same. But after just a few years, the Texas property tax will be much higher because California property tax pretty much doesn't go up after you buy. Also energy taxes soak Texans because they use a lot more energy than in California due to the hotter summers and colder winters.

[cryptonector]

One might pay less in taxes in Cupertino, but if the mortgage service is 3.5x what it would be in Austin, then one is still paying a tremendous amount in what amounts to a tax of sorts. Sure, if you have a mortgage you'll be building equity, but also paying more interest than you'll ever build in equity, and you'll depend on ever-increasing property values to begin to make this a worthwhile trade-off.

[chasebank]

How do they pay lower overall taxes?

[jedberg]

Here is an article on it:

https://www.yahoo.com/video/everything-bigger-texas-includin...

But basically the higher property taxes and additional taxes and fees that Texan's pay on consumption, like energy taxes, end up more than making up for the lack of income tax, unless you're a top 1% earner (which is somewhere around $700k/yr). Energy tax is a big one because Texan's use a lot more energy since they have hotter summers and colder winters.

[cryptonector]

If you don't consider higher cost of shelter a sort of tax...

The cost of shelter for an Apple employee in Cupertino is what, 3.5x the cost of shelter for an Apple employee in Austin? Nuts.

[spacemadness]

I think these people making these choices are in another universe from most of us working folk, so understanding this behavior from one data point isn’t going to make sense. This could even be a second convenience home. It can be hard to wrap your head around that much wealth if you’re in more down to earth class.

[jedberg]

I haven't met the new owners yet, but most of my other newer neighbors are not what you'd consider wealthy. It's mostly families with two working adults where one works or worked at FAANG and sometimes both. Most people's story start with "my FAANG stock made my down payment, and the salary pays the mortgage".

The older neighbors are generally people who have owned for 30+ years and bought when things were still reasonable. The houses in our neighborhood are all about 60 years old, and we even still have some original owners!

But the point is for the most part people here are not so wealthy they can stop working, they just have high paying local jobs to pay for their really expensive house and don't have a lot left over after housing expenses.

[spacemadness]

Spending 3.2 million on a home is in another league of wealth from the vast majority of people.

[strikelaserclaw]

they probably could stop working, they just wouldn't be able to afford a house in Curpertino.

[iancmceachern]

Yeah but the weather....

[cryptonector]

I love the weather in Austin. Not very cold in the winter, and I love the dry heat of the summer.

[purpleblue]

San Francisco condos are down a lot, many going for less than $1000/sqft now. But that's also the political climate and the increase in crime that is contributing to all that. I might come in when condo prices fall to about $600/sqft.

[itake]

I heard a similar story about Bellevue and Sammamish, WA. North Seattle-area (Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mill Creek, etc) have seen a price decline.

[vbtemp]

Many of the Northern VA counties and certain others in the DC metro area.

[tssva]

Things cooled somewhat in the fall but have definitely rebounded. On Friday the 10th I placed my townhouse in Loudoun on the market. Choose from 17 offers on Sunday evening. Accepted an all-cash offer with a quick closing for well above asking. Moving on Saturday.

[jjk166]

I've been looking around the suburbs of Philadelphia, it's been a frenzy since summer of 2020. I guess it's slightly better in the sense that houses stay on the market for a few days instead of a few hours, but it's still absurd. My uncle, who is also in the area, put his home up for sale about a month ago and got a multimillion dollar offer same day without anyone even looking at the place. Even though prices have tripled and mortgage rates have doubled, a mortgage is still cheaper than rent.

[sharkmerry]

entirely anecdota but a house me in the peninsula bay area, got bought for 1million (3/2) 8 months ago. got reno'ed- listed for 1.698 a month ago- went for 1.755

[Mizoguchi]

I have noticed the same trend where I live and among my close group of acquaintances and friends. Some couples are buying houses way north of 600K even while still having a mortgage on a perfectly nice home a few blocks away. My wife and I look at each other completely puzzled. Like what is going on? Are people making this much money? Or are they getting into terrible deals due to FOMO? We could certainly afford a new home now but no way in hell we are jumping on this market, our money goes to buy discounted stock or sits on CDs.

[bufferoverflow]

It could be an inflation hedge. You buy a house at a fixed rate, you pay your $5K/mo mortgage for 30 years. Meanwhile inflation makes this $5K less and less in real value. But you can rent it out for more and more.

[pascalxus]

in other words, shorting the dollar. it's the same reason you buy just about any asset that's not bonds or cash AKA real assets. People know, it's only a matter of time before the feds default on the value of the dollar.

[bufferoverflow]

No, they just slowly devalue it. Though not so slowly in the last couple of years.

Default is different, it's an inability to pay debts. They have no problem printing more dollars and paying debts.

[pascalxus]

i mean by having inflation run hot at 5-10% for many years or decades, they're defaulting on their obligation to provide a stable value currency for the people.

[bufferoverflow]

There's no such obligation. USD purchasing power has been dropping pretty steadily.

[tonymet]

With savings & investments so volatile people are taking riskier bets in order to diversify

[lazide]

Also FOMO.

Stress makes people have a harder time filtering and looking at the long term.

[hartator]

> I just got an update from my realtor that, compared to 2021, houses are now getting 5-10 offers instead of 10-20.

Well, Realtors are incentivized to portray the market hotter than it actually is.

[vbtemp]

They are portraying the market exactly as it is. Reality is speaking for itself, not the realtors.

[hartator]

OP was talking about realtors. Realtors commission is based on final price, why not portraying the market hotter?

[AnimalMuppet]

Because if you make the seller think the market is hotter than it is, then they price the house too high, and the house doesn't sell. That results in $0 commission.

I could see them telling buyers that the market is hotter than it is. But even that might backfire, if they make qualified buyers think that they can't afford to buy in the current market.

[SilasX]

Okay, then presumably you can just appeal to the real basis for that claim, rather than the unreliable realtor source?

[rednerrus]

I've been to the open houses and I've been watching Redfin and seen the houses come open on Thursday and pending on Monday.

[hartator]

Which areas? Austin this is not the case anymore and I thought this was one of the “hotter” areas in the US.

[rednerrus]

Pacific Northwest

[pc86]

What is the average selling price? Median for my county is ~$325k and our experience matched yours exactly up through and including the $800s. You really had to be looking at stuff 3-3.5x the median price to have a reasonable experience where you could do an inspection or expect them to replace the 19 year old furnace (or at least credit most of a new unit).

[sciencesama]

Hmm, wait for a couple of months and see how the value of the homes fall !!

[pascalxus]

We hear this ALLLLL the time. I've heard it for nearly half a decade as I waited and waited and waited forever to buy a house, and yet through all of the disasters, house prices just kept going up and up and up.

The assumption is, since almost no one can afford a house, prices MUST fall. Here's the thing no one gets: the "almost" part is very important. If, in a city of 100,000 people, only the richest 100 can afford (less than 1% of the population) a house but there's only 10 houses on the market, then prices can still continue to skyrocket.

Overall demand does not need to be super high for prices to go up. It's Demand relative to supply that matters. And in markets where supply is really really tiny then demand doesn't need to be very high in order to outstrip supply.

[tenacious_tuna]

I've felt kind of similarly. My wife and I are young--graduated college in 2018--and I feel like I've been a bit lied to about what constitutes "good financial decisions" over the past couple years. We've been squirreling away cash to have an emergency fund, long enough to support us being out of work for 6months, paying down her student loans, trying to wait on buying a car, etc--but our friends have been buying houses, cars, etc etc, and it seems like that's been the more prudent decision time and time again.

We delayed buying a house to have a bit more in savings? House prices skyrocket, our friends who leveraged the crap out of themselves look genius.

We wait to buy a car to have a bit more in savings / wait for the used market to come down? The used market goes up, our friends who bought new cars look like geniuses.

There's part of me that keeps waiting for a correction, esp. in the housing market, both so that houses come back into our budget range, but also maybe because there's part of me that feels vindictive about the fact that everyone who, to my sensibilities, seems to be acting recklessly are making out better than we are.

Some of that is reasonable, I suspect: we're very financially conservative relative to our peer group, which means we're going to miss out on some opportunities, and I don't want to be "proven right" in saving for a rainy day by everyone else having economic hardship, but I do feel rather confused about how we're "supposed" to behave in this market.

We're also remarkably well off, as is our peer group, which will obviously skew the data radically, but it also scares the crap out of me: if these are the thoughts we're having with a household income just barely under $200k this young, what is everyone else thinking?

[lazypenguin]

I know someone from FSU (former Soviet Union). Their grandparents saved for decades, literally keeping their cash under their mattress. The grandmother wanted to buy a car but the grandfather said it’s better to save. One day they woke up in December of 1991 and that money was almost worthless. “We should have bought a car”, that grandmother never let her husband live it down.

Financial decisions are not so black and white. IMO only basic rules apply: live below your means, save more than you spend, avoid debt, etc. Any advice beyond that is a crapshoot.

[pascalxus]

There's two kinds of spending: assets and liabilities. assets make you richer, liabilities make you poorer. Car is the later.

It's okay to save every penny but you can't keep it in cash. You've got to buy some real asset: either real estate, gold, equities or bitcoin.

[lazide]

It is VERY typical for volume to drop, while prices peak in high demand areas before volume drops to zero.

[rch]

Banks push this to the limit by making it comparatively expensive for individual buyers to build, preferring to offer loans for already overpriced homes.

Edit: At least this has been my experience. Have people found otherwise themselves?

[whitemary]

How dare you think critically about economics!

[vbtemp]

The funny thing is, people were saying that in 2021... and then... interest rates doubled/tripled crippling affordability, people's net worth plummeted due to decrease in stock prices, and more people got laid off... And everything keeps on trucking straight through it. I visited my realtor when she was showing a house for sale, and it was astounding the traffic and people coming up whispering to her how they wanted to make an offer that moment. And then on top of that the offers that came in with escalation clauses, waiving of all contingencies, etc. And this is March 2023.

[VirusNewbie]

I’m in a suburb of LA and while prices are still up quite a bit from mid 2020, houses in my immediate neighborhood are selling for hundreds of thousands less than they did at peak.

[nradov]

In hot markets with thin inventory there are still enough affluent buyers who can afford to pay cash using gains from other investments or family wealth. Prices are set at the margins so it only takes a few such buyers in each neighborhood to keep market prices high. Ultimately people need somewhere to live, and if they have to be in a particular area due to work or family obligations then they'll pay whatever it costs regardless of the underlying value.

[vbtemp]

Solving for the equilibrium though, if the prices fall, more buyers will be available to compete, so it ends up right where it was before.

[lazide]

With interest rates rising, the volume of buyers is dropping. In high demand areas, the folks who got lucky with a windfall or whatever, can still buy.

But the normal buyers will get more and more priced out, and the affluent area will end up with less and less volume as sellers start waiting it out because the volume of available buyers gets thinner and selling gets riskier.

[dilyevsky]

People will not sell at a loss bc they locked in to 2% mortgages for 30 years so no

[andrewmutz]

The same phenomenon happened in 2008. I think it boils down to the question of whether or not sellers are motivated at scale.

In 08, the poor labor market meant that many people had to sell. That caused prices to drop.

We aren't at that point yet this time, and I don't think anyone knows whether or not we are headed for a seriously rocky job market.

[dilyevsky]

Yeah but a lot of those 08 mortgages had much higher rates and even variable rates in the subprime division. Labor market is holding strong rn so even if it happens it’s gonna take much longer than a few months

[HDThoreaun]

They were giving mortgages to people they knew couldn't afford them in 08. I have not seen any evidence of that here.

[dilyevsky]

I think the implication here is if you lose your job and can’t find it for a while you suddenly can’t afford your mortgage either

[purpleblue]

The job market is still historically EXTREMELY strong. We would need unemployment to hit over 5-6% before mortgages became an issue.

[yardie]

If you mean dentists, lawyers, and doctors. Yeah, they were giving too many prime borrowers with great credit scores way more debt than they could sufficiently manage.

[sokoloff]

I don't think 2008 was nearly the same in terms of the fixed rate mortgage positioning. A seller in 2008 could likely move and get a mortgage at a practically the same rate as the one they were leaving. That meant that trading down in housing cost would improve their cashflow.

Sellers now with a 2.75% fixed-30 mortgage could trade down a significant amount in housing cost and end up with worse cashflow if they take on a new mortgage at 5+%.

[jorblumesea]

> 2017 home prices are unsustainable!

> 2019 it has to crash sometime

> 2022 ok now is the time for home prices to call

> 2027 it must crash!

The reality is that home prices are buoyed by a number of systemic factors that cause supply to be constrained. Prices will go down in total value due to interest rate rises. Homes will not be more affordable.

[harambae]

> Prices will go down in total value due to interest rate rises.

As somebody with the cash, I'd settle for even seeing this much. So far it's been high interest rates with the same high prices (in much if the Northeast).

[tomrod]

Pressure is on supply, demand relatively strong as ever.

Supply: low and expensive new builds, heavy rate lockin.

Demand: muted due to higher rates, but sometimes people gotta move. So a slight haircut, but in many areas most likely less haircut than supply constraint.

We are seeing some sifting in the market but I personally believe sales volume is driven by supply lockin, meaning its still a seller's market.

[afavour]

I'm not saying it won't happen but people have been saying exactly this for a decade.

[cloverich]

That doesnt make sense... interest rates have been low for a decade. Why would falling prices be predicted?

[cool_dude85]

There's a general sense that housing is not affordable for the middle class who does not already own a home. You predict falling prices with the thought that it's not sustainable and some changes in public policy will occur, as we will not allow for middle class people to be unable to afford a home.

[dragonwriter]

It is sustainable, though, if you don’t assume homeownership rates have to be constant-or-rising.

[tomrod]

Supply remains constrained, now with people not wanting to take on higher interest rates.

Move rates are roughly 9-10% a year. I bet we see that a lot lower for this quarter and next few quarters.

[vbtemp]

I think this is generally correct. This is the situation in my area: Prices can never fall, because if the situation was such that prices would fall, no one sells. So there's basically little to nothing available, so buyers are stuck competing no matter the macroeconomic situation.

[lazide]

Even in ‘08 this was the case.

That’s why short sales, foreclosures, ‘mailing the keys in’, etc. were a thing.

With housing, it’s NEVER a thing that someone just sells at a loss just because.

They sell at a loss because they don’t have a choice, and the bigger the loss, usually because the less choice they have.

If labor market is still doing well, then there is little pressure. Usually that happens a bit later anyway - construction workers out of work because housing isn’t being built, or folks employed by tech workers get laid off because tech isn’t so sure about those bonuses, etc.

We’ll see though - maybe the fed will pull off a soft landing this time.

[afavour]

I just mean in a very general sense "just wait until the housing market collapses!" is a very common refrain, absent any evidence to prompt it.

[waynesonfire]

what are they going to wait for? the rate of increase to decline 5 percent?

[bdcravens]

I bought into a new community northwest of Houston, closed last summer. It's about 75% built out, and the new houses are sitting available for some time.

[hcurtiss]

Anectdotal, but the same is happening in the mid-Willamette Valley, Oregon. We've recently seen houses listed and sell next day for over asking. How those prices line up to historic averages, I can't say, but after a maybe 5 month cooling period, I can say things have definitely picked up in our neighborhood. We have two close realtor friends and they confirm the same.

[Fatnino]

Theres a house on my street in palo alto thats been sitting on the market for some 3-4 months.

Previous owner died, someone bought it and cleaned it up to flip it. It actually looks very nice.

No one is buying it though.

[alpineidyll3]

A) Tune out anything realtors tell you if you want to be an intelligent consumer. B) Volume has collapsed because people in homes with low rate morts can't move. These prices are "less solid" because liquidity is poor.

In Austin prices are def. down ~ 8%, after this hike and sustained layoffs I am betting it will shed another 8 by the end of summer...

[62951413]

All of that to buy something like a 2 bed, 1 bath SFH of 735 sqft built 76 years ago for $1M (https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/1761-Geary...).

[debacle]

Higher interest rates lower demand, but they also lower supply.

In our area, age on the market is increasing and I think the average for some areas is over 60 days, which is an indicator for a buyers' market.

[AviationAtom]

Inventory is still below demand in most places. People are just freaking out because the mania has subsided. I'd call this current market about normal.

[stephenitis]

What state, region, market are you in?

[lazide]

That’s because it’s worse, but not really bad yet.

[subsubzero]

I assume you are in the Seattle metro area?

[coolbreezetft22]

I follow the market for Seattle East side pretty closely and prices have definitely dropped compared to a year ago. A ton of houses that were listed with ridiculous early 2022 prices have been re-listed multiple times to lower prices, in many cases dropping the price by well over 6 figures. One example a house in my neighborhood initially listed for 1.8m ended up selling for 1.45m

[vbtemp]

No, which goes to say the price-escalations and white-hot housing markets are still a thing across North America, straight through the tech crash, bond crash, layoffs, and now banking crisis.

[tonymet]

There are obviously huge distortions in the housing market.

- how many buyers are investors from private equity or foreign investors vs residents (who intend to live in the property)?

- What is the true population including undocumented people? this will be off by 30-50% in some areas

- What is the true vacancy rate? In my area there are many houses sitting vacant. I’m assuming they are investments or tax dodges

It baffles me at how critical the housing market is and that no one takes responsibility to understand what is affecting prices. We just accept prices as a force of nature.