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Are we in for low interest rates for the foreseeable future? What will cause them to rise?
Gas is as cheap as can be considering we've gotten at high as $4/gallon here in IL at one point.
WineHorror1 saysWhat will cause them to rise?
housing affordability??? If you cant afford a single house, invest in Bitcoin and buy two houses.
G36 sayshousing affordability??? If you cant afford a single house, invest in Bitcoin and buy two houses.
Stop pumping Bitcoin. Where the fuck do you sit ? At some cubicle in the Kremlin ?
Massive retirement by the Boomers. Oh it has only just begun. The later Boomers are still working.
they dont let us go back to the office yet.
This housing “boom” is just the Rule of Ten at work. It’s a perfect textbook example of prices rising ten percent when rates drop a point or more.
Don't be jealous I get to work from home.
We know you are pissed about Bitcoin hitting new ATH's
Should have bought some instead of bitching about it all these years.
Are we in for low interest rates for the foreseeable future?From here to eternity with Janet Yellen in charge again. People want more hair of the dog that bit them.
works the night shift in the service industry.
Are we in for low interest rates for the foreseeable future? What will cause them to rise?
https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/economists-are-ringing-alarms-about-home-affordability-what-to-know-51608031800
Amid an economic crisis, high unemployment, and calls for the continuation of mortgage forbearance and foreclosure protections, home sales have been remarkably strong, and prices have continued to rise. Now some economists are saying home prices have grown so far, so fast that further sales growth may be hindered as affordability becomes a concern.
The price of an existing single-family home rose to $313,000 in October, the National Association of Realtors reported last month, a 16% increase on a year-over-year basis. That’s more than double the home price growth seen the same month a year prior. The rate of price growth will likely remain strong, as the inventory of homes for sale—which was low before the pandemic—now lingers at historic lows.
While home price growth shows little sign of slowing, sales are another story. The number of existing homes in contract dipped for the second month in a row in October, according to a National Association of Realtors report released last month, though it remained elevated compared to last year. “There’s no question that the market is still extremely robust, but to sustain where it had been is just not realistic,” says Ivy Zelman, CEO of housing research firm Zelman & Associates.
The high levels of homebuyer demand and faster sales pace seen in recent months have been attributed to a myriad of very 2020 reasons: More people working from home, millennials buying their first house, and the chaos spurred by the pandemic. Persistently low mortgage rates have facilitated all this buying, tempering home prices.
Low mortgage rates, which dipped below 3% in July, the first time ever, canceled out rising home prices earlier this year. If supply remains low and demand remains high, home prices will continue to rise—meaning already-low mortgage rates would need to fall even further to offset the cost.
Recent pending sales data prompted industry economists to warn about rising unaffordability. “The housing market is still hot, but we may be starting to see rising home prices hurting affordability,” Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist said in a release in late November. That same day, the Mortgage Bankers Association similarly warned that fast home price growth made it more difficult for first-time buyers to afford a home, while Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater wrote in early December that rapidly escalating home prices are “eroding the benefits of the low mortgage rate environment.”
Higher home prices could soften sales further in the coming year as a result of sticker shock, Zelman says. As home prices climb, prospective buyers could feel that they missed their chance to buy. “If we continue to see that upward pressure [on home prices] because inventories are so tight, you’ll start to see pushback by consumers,” she says.
Mortgage access is another hurdle. Credit availability fell sharply in the wake of the pandemic and remains 30% below pre-Covid levels, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, restricting access further. Credit will likely remain tight through the end of the crisis, says Joel Kan, the organization’s vice president of economic and industry forecasting. “The recovery is proceeding along very differently for different parts of the population,” Kan adds. The rising bar of homeownership could contribute to an increasingly unequal recovery as those who lost jobs during the pandemic are unable to build equity during a period of rapidly appreciating home values.
Rising prices are unlikely to lead to a housing market crash, even if sales cool. “It’s not a market that’s [so] stratospheric it’s going to come crashing back down to earth,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. “For that to happen, the economy would have to crater, or interest rates would have to spike.” While a crash isn’t likely, expect unaffordability to become a greater issue in 2021.
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