How is the housing market doing in the middle of January?
Altos Research released their weekly report on Monday, and their data continues to show the housing market growing. However, the market was a bit slower than expected this past week. It’s believed that the slight rise in mortgage rates and the severe cold throughout half the country impacted activity in the real estate sector.
Housing sales trends indicated that coastal markets dominated sales, while the Midwest was much slower.
Last week, single-family home listings showed a 7% increase over the same week a year ago, indicating that a warmup for the housing market could still be on its way in the Spring. The market also gained 44,000 new listings this past week, a 2% increase from 2023.
When it comes to home prices, the median home price of an existing home was at $420,000, while the median price of a new home was $399,000. According to Altos Research, new home prices are on track to set an all-time high in May 2024. There are no signals of a crash or significant drop in home prices in the existing data.
How did mortgage rates start the week?
The national average for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate dipped 0.05% to 6.87%* on Monday. There really wasn’t any compelling announcements or data, so bonds rallied a little and mortgage rates ground their way down a little. Volume on the bond market was low and there wasn’t much volatility.
We’ll get more important events in the next three weeks that should provide a clearer direction for the market to go.
Existing home sales show signs of improvement
The National Association of Realtors released existing home sales data yesterday, and the results were a bit of a mixed bag. Sales were lower than expected, but inventory continues to show monthly gains.
Existing home sales dipped slightly in December 2023, but a recovery could be on the way. Mortgage rates have cooled off from their previous highs, and home inventory has shown signs of improvement.
Lawrence Yun, chief economist for NAR, said, “The latest month’s sales look to be the bottom before inevitably turning higher in the new year. Mortgage rates are meaningfully lower compared to just two months ago, and more inventory is expected to appear on the market in upcoming months.”
There were about 1.0 million available homes on the market in December 2023, up 4.2% from the previous year.
* National average rates accurate as of 1/22/24 from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are not advertised rates from Guaranteed Rate.
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