Home sales fall in March with mortgage rates rising

Table Of Content

• Supreme Court won't let former Trump aide Peter Navarro out of jail while he appeals sentence
• Column: We’re wiping out the Southern California steelhead trout. Time to fix that
• Follow Redfin
• New home sales still growing from 2022 lows
• Can California curb retail theft without changing Prop. 47? Assembly Democrats unveil their plan

But if the housing market is thawing, it's not happening very quickly. In a news release issued Thursday, Freddie Mac said there are already signs that the growth in applications is slowing down. Redfin’s national metrics include data from 400+ U.S. metro areas, and is based on homes listed and/or sold during the period. The latest surge in prices reflects the heightened competition many home shoppers are facing. Consider, 60% of homes purchased in March sold within less than a month of hitting the market.

Haven for millionaire house hunters? Coral Gables, Miami Beach have priciest U.S. homes - Miami Herald

Haven for millionaire house hunters? Coral Gables, Miami Beach have priciest U.S. homes.

Posted: Mon, 29 Apr 2024 09:00:00 GMT [source]

Supreme Court won't let former Trump aide Peter Navarro out of jail while he appeals sentence

Prices may soften, or you may get sucked into (way) overpaying for a home. Or perhaps, you buy your dream home only to find your dream job is in another town, and you are forced to move. Most experts do not expect a housing market crash in 2024 since many homeowners have built up significant equity in their homes.

Column: We’re wiping out the Southern California steelhead trout. Time to fix that

Home prices rose substantially during the pandemic housing boom as historically low mortgage rates and remote work fueled demand. Then inflation crept up until it couldn’t be ignored, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. That in turn pushed mortgage rates up (which seem to have peaked at a more than two-decade high), and sales plummeted to an almost 30-year low. But home prices haven’t fallen, not meaningfully, and not broadly because nobody is selling their house.

Follow Redfin

“Buyers have a few more choices available than last year,” Zillow Chief Economist Skylar Olsen wrote in a recent blog post. After a series of “unimpressive Januaries the last few years,” last month’s uptick in inventory is still relatively modest, she said. But Olsen forecasts “a competitive home shopping season come spring” nonetheless. Caroline Basile is Forbes Advisor’s student loans and mortgages deputy editor.

It thinks that trend will spread to more cities in 2024 even as mortgage rates slip a bit further. There are signals that buyers are out there touring homes despite rising rates. Mortgage-purchase applications are up 5% week over week, and Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index–a measure of requests for tours and other buying services from Redfin agents–is near its highest level in seven months. Chen Zhao, Redfin’s economic research lead, said some house hunters are hoping to buy now because they’re concerned rates could rise more, and others have grown accustomed to elevated rates and pushed down their home-price budget accordingly. “Markets are just kind of recalibrating for the reality that the Fed is not going to cut interest rates right away,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst.

New home sales still growing from 2022 lows

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who led the court’s liberal flank in attacking the criminalization of homeless people, struck a similar note. The decriminalization of psychedelics has become a mainstream policy issue. Following legal reforms in Colorado and Oregon, the California legislature is once again debating a bill that would establish a regulated market of psychedelic therapies. There is a growing body of medical research showing psychedelic-assisted therapies can be tremendously effective at helping treat anxiety, severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and mental illness. Though the creation of international co-productions remains an extraordinary challenge, their number is growing, driven by the ambitions of major players such as public broadcaster RTVE and The Mediapro Studio.

Key housing markets are starting to buck national trends: Redfin

The rule is set to take effect in mid-July, once the settlement receives judge approval. U.S. home prices declined in January for the third consecutive month due to high borrowing costs, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index. But prices year-over-year jumped 6%—the fastest annual rate since 2022. As we head into peak home-buying season, signs of life have begun to spring up in the housing market. A Times analysis from 2022 found that stores in higher-income areas locked up fewer items even in places where property crime rates were higher, creating an additional burden for shoppers in certain neighborhoods.

“A criminal record makes it harder to find and keep housing, it makes it harder to find and keep a job, it makes it harder to reconnect with family and community members who a person experiencing homelessness may be estranged from,” Donovan said. Local officials said the ruling was a disaster that expanded encampments, with homeless advocates arguing that people have a right to all sorts of materials in cold and inhospitable public spaces, including tents and fires. Debra Blake, a then-60-year-old homeless plaintiff who died during the litigation, wrote in a 2019 court declaration that she knew hundreds of people who slept outdoors in Grants Pass, about 40 miles north of the California border on the 5 Freeway.

Mortgage rates are high and housing inventory is tight, but some experts see the market’s deep freeze starting to thaw this spring. NAR’s Pending Homes Sales Index rose 1.6% in February from the month prior even as mortgage rates approached 7% by the end of the month. Existing inventory rose 5.9%—logging 1.07 million unsold homes at the end of February. However, there are still only 2.9 months of inventory at the current sales pace. Most experts consider a balanced market falling between four and six months. “[W]e’re definitely looking forward to a better housing market in 2024 as interest rates start to settle around 6% or even lower,” says Jewgieniew.

Certain areas, and price points, are going to see an even higher percentage of homes selling for more than asking. There are a lot more people who are desperately trying to buy one-million-dollar homes than 100-million-dollar homes. The best home-purchasing advice I can give you is to buy the right house for you at the right time. If you own a home that you like and live in for the long-term, then most short-term market pressure on real estate shouldn’t matter because you likely won’t be forced to sell during what would likely be a temporary downturn.

Dana Robinson, a 46-year-old freelance writer, and Scott Rowden, a 44-year-old video editor, rent a Sherman Oaks apartment and want to buy a house in the neighborhood to build equity and give their 2-year-old daughter a backyard. On Monday, partly in anticipation of a more aggressive Fed, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage hit 6.18%, up from 5.5% the previous Monday, according to Mortgage News Daily. The consulting firm predicted home prices would then decline by the mid-single digits in both 2023 and 2024 as the Fed’s efforts to fight inflation push the economy into recession. Many analysts predict home prices will keep rising this year, but by a smaller percentage than they are rising now. Experts say there’s plenty of water available for new Californians if the trend of residents using less continues and accelerates into the future.

RTVE’s latest title, “Weiss & Morales,” linking it with Spain’s Portcabo and Germany’s ZDF and ZDF Studios and Nadcon, has gone into production in the Canary Islands. The proposal to allow catastrophe models is part of Lara’s larger Sustainable Insurance Strategy announced last fall. Other elements include righting the finances of the state’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements plan, an insurer of last resort that has been deluged with new policyholders since insurers started pulling back from the market. He also wants to allow insurers to include in premiums the cost of reinsurance, which they purchase to protect themselves from disasters. Such a model could be used to set rates or benchmark privately developed models.

For many buyers and sellers alike, it’s beginning to sink in that “we’re not going back to three and four percent mortgage rates” anytime soon, he said. Even so, still-high mortgage rates and home prices amid historically low housing stock continue to put homeownership out of reach for many. If you are looking to leave LA or downsize from a single-family home to a condo, now may be a great time to sell. Under normal circumstances, I would try and talk you out of bidding up a house price in Los Angeles.