New Real Estate Data: Dramatically Different Housing Market Than July 2022

My friend Mike Simonson has turned into a bit of a rock star over the last 3 years, so much so that Housing Wire bought Altos research for an undisclosed amount in December of last year. Yet Mike continues to crank out awesome real estate data related content. Real Estate and Mortgage folks love his videos as they take complicated data and make it easy to understand. But really, the magic is that he previews data BEFORE the rest of the industry as he uses leading indicators – rather than lag indicators.

In yesterday’s “hows the real estate market” video Mike claimed that “this is a dramatically different housing market than last year”. Typically, price cuts of existing inventory begins as the summer heats up. Last year, interest rates were jumping up – and that caused buyers to stop buying due to sticker shock. Mike points out that now, with rates stabilized around 7%, people have adjusted expectations (read: budget) and are back to buying homes. This increase in demand y/y has prevented the typical price cuts from occurring.

Additionally, different than the last 4 years – prices are stable y/y. The average (median) home list price this week nationally was $410k, and the avg listing price was $455k. This virtually mirrors last year at this time.

Finally, unlike last year when Inventory was increasing as people stopped buying, this year inventory has continued to drop. This ought to prevent prices from dropping, and instead keep price stability. This inventory is more like 2020. And low inventory makes it VERY difficult for realtors to do typical lead gen thru the portals. There are too many people fishing for too few fish. Thats where Revaluate can help with your real estate lead gen.

But thats the real story for our world – that transaction volume seems to be on track for the projected 20% drop vs last year. With higher rates, the sky definitely didn’t fall this spring as some projected. Demand is still strong and buyers and sellers are adjusting to the new normal.