Luxe Austin Homes - sellers

"Here’s what’s happening with home prices as mortgage rates fall"

CNBC reports, "the U.S. housing market cooled off pretty dramatically last year, after mortgage rates more than doubled from historic lows. Home prices, however, have been stickier.

Prices began falling last June, but are still higher than they were a year ago. Now, as demand appears to be coming back into the market, due to a slight drop in mortgage rates, prices are pushing back.

In December, the latest read, U.S. home prices were 6.9% higher year over year, according to CoreLogic. That was the lowest annual appreciation rate since the late summer of 2020. Last April, annual price appreciation hit a high of 20%.

Falling home prices were reflecting weaker housing demand, as inflation, job cuts and uncertainty in the economy piled onto the…

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"Austin housing market more stable after cooling 2022 demand, report finds"

CultureMap Austin writes, "In a slightly contradictory year, the 2022 Central Texas housing market saw both higher barriers to affordability and a shift toward buyers.

According to the Austin Board of Realtors' last monthly report of 2022 and year-end overview, inventory rose, but so did interest rates and construction costs. Prices rose, too, reaching a new annual record for the Austin-Round Rock MSA at $503,000 (up 11.4 percent). Travis County mirrored the pattern, as median prices increased 10.6 percent to $575,000.

Demand in the MSA lagged while supply stayed the same: New listings stayed steady but 33,547 homes were sold, down 18.3 percent from the previous year, and they generally stayed on the market for 31 days, 11 days longer. This was…

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"A Tale of 2 Housing Markets: Why Some Homes Still Cause Heated Bidding Wars While Others Sit Unsold"

Realtor.com shares, "homebuyers who are closely watching the correction in the real estate market might believe now is a good time to pounce. After all, homes are sitting on the market for longer, those maddening bidding wars have dried up, and wild offers over the asking price are things of the past, right?

Well, not exactly. It all depends on what they’re hoping to purchase.

Those searching for a home are seeing plenty of fixer-uppers, homes lacking curb appeal, and those in less desirable areas sitting on the market for longer and undergoing price reductions. But well-appointed, well-situated turnkey homes are still selling fast, often receiving multiple offers, and even selling over the asking price. It’s as if the housing slowdown hasn’t…

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"Builders Are Slowing Down New Construction Despite the Housing Shortage. What Gives?"

Realtor.com reports, "the nation might be in the clutches of a dire housing shortage, but builders won’t be putting up enough new homes this year to make much of a dent.

Housing starts, which is when construction has begun but not yet completed, are expected to fall to about 744,000 single-family homes in 2023 as builders continue to pull back, according to the National Association of Home Builders forecast. That’s down about 12% from last year.

However, NAHB expects new construction will rebound in the second half of the year, giving a boost to the overall economy.

“Typically, single-family construction tends to recover before the economy rebounds,” says NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “By the time we get to the second part of the year,…

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"2023’s Housing Market Is Looking Up: 3 Things That Should Give Homebuyers Real Hope"

Realtor.com writes, "after suffering all-time lows during the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of homes for sale has rebounded with a bang.

January marked a whopping 65% more real estate listings than this same month a year earlier, according to a recent inventory report from Realtor.com®.

And while home prices are still up year over year, they’ve declined from the pandemic peak. January’s median home list price clocked in at $400,000—holding steady since December but much lower than June’s record high of $449,000.

In addition to this deluge of homes for sale at more reasonable prices, mortgage rates are also down from their 20-year high, which broke 7% in November. For the week ending Jan. 26, Freddie Mac found that rates for a 30-year…

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"Are buyers already coming back into the housing market?"

Austin Business Journal reports, "since the start of the new year, there's indications buyers may be — albeit slowly — reentering the housing market, owing in part to mortgage rates that've stabilized since 2022's volatility.

Redfin Corp. (Nasdaq: RDFN) found while pending home sales fell 26% year over year during the four weeks ending Jan. 22, that was the smallest drop in more than three months, and that metric had began rising on a month-over-month basis since December.

Separately, home tours and requests for service for Redfin remain down 23% and 27% respectively from a year prior, but both are an improvement from a November trough of that activity being down 40%.

Pending home sales increased in December for the first time since May 2022,…

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"Zillow says Austin’s housing market is now ‘ice cold,’ Austin Board of Realtors says no way"

KXAN Austin writes, "just days after the Austin Board of Realtors said the local housing market is starting to “rebalance,” Zillow has released a much harsher outlook: the Austin market is now “ice cold.”

The characterization comes as Zillow released its market report for December 2022.

The report shows homes in the Austin area are spending a median of 68 days on the market, more than in any other major metro nationwide. Back in December 2021, Zillow reported homes in the area were on the market for a median of 22 days.

Another metric in the report shows homes aren’t selling for as much as they used to. In November, just 11% of listings sold for higher than the asking price, down from 47% a year before.

That may be leading some homeowners…

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"The Pros and Cons of a Mortgage Buy-Down for Homebuyers, According to Loan Experts"

Realtor.com writes, "tough financial times call for creative financing. Historically high mortgage rates and a cooling housing market have caused buyers and sellers to look for novel ways to stretch their dollar and seal a deal.

Buyers, scared by lofty mortgage rates that threaten to add hundreds of dollars to their monthly housing bill, are seeking out mortgage buy-downs as a way to trim some of that excess. Sellers, desperate to unload homes, are often willing to help out.

Simply put, a mortgage rate buy-down is upfront money, often paid by the home seller (builders and lenders can also front the cost), to “buy down” the interest rate on the buyer’s loan for a period of time. This temporarily eases a buyer’s mortgage woes.

But just how…

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"Homes in Austin metro are taking longer to sell than they have in more than a decade"

KXAN reports, "the Austin housing market has “shifted and started to rebalance,” with homes now spending an average of more than two months on the market.

The Austin Board of Realtors President Ashley Jackson made the comments in the December edition of the board’s monthly housing market report, released Wednesday.

“December tells us a lot about how the market has shifted and started to rebalance as there was a sales price drop and a staggering increase in how long homes take to sell,” Jackson said.

Homes that sold in December spent an average of 73 days on the market, almost triple the average from a year ago. The average is the highest since March 2012 — almost 11 years ago — when homes took on average 83 days to sell, according to ABoR…

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"Real Estate CEOs, Economists & Other Experts Predict a “Less Crazy” Housing Market in 2023, But Expect Any Improvements to be Gradual"

Yahoo Finance writes, "while there is no clear consensus about what will happen to mortgage rates and home sales in 2023, the real estate experts from organizations like the Mortgage Bankers Association, Zillow, Taylor Morrison, and others surveyed in Point’s 2023 Real Estate Expert Survey agree 2023 will likely bring less volatility to the real estate market. But any improvement will be slow.

Point asked experts about where mortgage rates will land this year; what will happen to existing-home sales; and what advice they would give home buyers and sellers.

Key findings include:

• About three-quarters of the respondents expect the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate to stay below 7% in June 2023. By December, every respondent believes rates…

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