Does this sound disturbingly familiar? Skyrocketing home prices have very suddenly leveled off. Recession fears are swirling. The number of home sales has dropped. Is it 2006—the year that saw the ramp-up to America’s housing crash two years later—all over again?
Just like in the mid-2000s, experts are adamant that the correction in the housing market is simply that: a correction and not a catastrophe. Many news reports from early 2006, which often downplayed the risk of a severe housing crash, seem like they could be written about what’s happening today.
But back then, the pundits were wrong. We all know that a housing bubble burst, ushering in the Great Recession and taking down the global economy with it. Hindsight is 20/20.
So is the housing market in for a repeat performance? Or is this just some temporary pain for both buyers and sellers?
“Parallels can be drawn because of how quickly home prices have risen over the past few years,” says Yelena Maleyev, an economist at KPMG. “But that’s where the comparisons would end.”
Housing experts are quick to point out that the foundation of today’s housing market is stronger than it was in the mid-2000s. This time the downturn is due to higher mortgage interest rates, which rose rapidly from below 3% in 2021 to the high 6% range.
Today’s buyers have monthly mortgage payments that are basically double what they were just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. So many aren’t buying, or they’re unable to bid up prices like they did over the past few years.
But the most important difference between then and now is there are many more buyers than there are homes available this time around. The acute housing shortage will likely keep prices from falling off a cliff.
During the Great Recession, there were plenty of available homes—and no one to purchase them—so prices dropped about 26% over five years for existing homes. Today, buyers are still willing to bid over the asking price for move-in ready homes in desirable neighborhoods despite the financial challenges they face.
In addition, mortgages made over the past few years are much safer than those made nearly 20 years ago when lenders joke that their dogs could have gotten loans. The worst of the subprime mortgages that got homeowners in trouble when their payments suddenly doubled—or even tripled—have largely been eradicated. Borrowers have been thoroughly vetted, and only the strongest have been approved. And today’s homeowners are generally sitting on record amounts of equity.
“There are a lot of similarities that we should not ignore just because this time is different. … We do have some of our fundamentals that are out of whack,” says Ali Wolf, chief economist of the building consultancy Zonda. “But I don’t think it’s going to be a crash because the undersupply of homes is so different.”
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Will home prices crash?
The question on the minds of homebuyers, sellers, and homeowners is what is going to happen with home prices.
They’ve already come down from their peaks last summer, which is typical. But they’ve also dipped a bit in some of the markets that got the most heated during the pandemic.
That’s reflected in the new-construction data from John Burns Real Estate Consulting. The price of newly built homes in Phoenix fell 15% year over year in March, according to the data. (The price includes incentives and concessions.)
In Boise, ID, another pandemic destination, prices were down 14% year over year for newly constructed homes. Prices dropped 10% in San Antonio, TX, just outside of Austin.
“It’s substantial,” says Devyn Bachman, senior vice president of research and operations at John Burns.
These places where prices rose the most or were extremely expensive to begin with might be the most vulnerable to larger price corrections, says Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist of Bright MLS. That includes the priciest parts of many housing markets, such as the downtowns of large cities.
Even with the affordability challenges, more than half of the sellers in the mid-Atlantic region received multiple offers in March, according to Sturtevant. About a third of all of the home sales went for more than the list price.
And home prices could continue to rise in the more affordable markets, such as in the Midwest. Homes in the lower price tiers could also see prices go up. Demand is so high for those more affordable properties that the competition often results in higher prices.
“We should expect some price corrections, not a price crash in these places where prices ran up the fastest,” says Sturtevant. “Everything seems to be slowing down a little bit … but everything still seems very competitive.”
The shortage of homes for sale is also keeping prices high. Builders have slowed down construction as their pool of buyers has dried up. And homeowners who would have listed their homes have been reluctant to do so thanks to the high mortgage rates. Most sellers are also buyers, many of whom will need to get a new mortgage at today’s rates. That means significantly higher monthly payments.
“Are there enough homes on the market for sale today? No,” says Matthew Gardner, chief economist at Windermere Real Estate. The Seattle-based brokerage covers much of the Western U.S. “Who is going to sell their home when they’re comfortably sitting on mortgage rates that are around 3%?”
Could higher mortgage rates deliver a death blow to the housing market?
Low mortgage rates were the fuel that caused the housing market to catch fire during the pandemic. Low rates meant buyers had more purchasing power—and could afford to bid higher than they otherwise would have. But when they rose, and buyers could no longer afford to buy, the housing correction commenced.
If the U.S. Federal Reserve keeps raising its rates to combat high inflation, mortgage rates are likely to keep climbing. That could scare off and price out additional buyers and put pressure on home prices to come down.
But many real estate professionals don’t anticipate mortgage rates to zoom up. They largely expect them to stay about where they are now—in the mid-6% range—at least through this spring.
Important to note: Historically, a 6% mortgage rate is relatively low. It’s a lot better than the peak of about 18.6% in September 1981, according to Freddie Mac data. The problem is home prices are high and memories of rates below 3% are fresh in the minds of many recent homebuyers and sellers. For every percentage point rise in rates, buyers can afford a whole lot less house.
Even though higher rates have led to a correction in the market, there are still buyers around the country queueing up at open houses.
“People have figured out how to make these mortgage rates work. They’re just looking for something to buy,” says Sturtevant.
Could there be another wave of foreclosures?
Foreclosures have been ticking up as pandemic-era moratoriums aimed at preventing homeowners from losing their properties have expired. But another tidal wave of foreclosures, like what happened during the 2000s, isn’t likely.
In the 2000s, “we had a huge amount of people using adjustable-rate mortgages with remarkably low interest rates. And there were also people who quite frankly should not have gotten a mortgage,” says Gardner, of Windermere. But when mortgage rates rose, “people found their mortgage payments doubling overnight and they had next to no equity. So what did they do? They walked away.”’
About 40% of homeowners currently own their homes outright without a mortgage, according to KPMG’s Maleyev. Many homeowners have record amounts of equity in their properties thanks to the rising prices over the past few years. So if they were having trouble making their mortgage payments, they choose to sell their homes instead—and often walk away with a profit. And most homeowners who have mortgages have 30-year fixed-rate loans, which don’t balloon in size over time.
There were more adjustable-rate mortgages in the early 2000s. So when mortgage rates ticked up and borrowers’ payments ballooned, “it didn’t take very much to burst that housing bubble,” says Maleyev.
Now, many real estate experts believe the nation is headed right into a recession—or will it be a near miss? A downturn with steep job losses would likely result in unemployed homeowners losing their abodes.
It would also discourage many folks, even those who remain employed, from purchasing property. Buying a home is typically the largest transaction that most people will ever make. And many people won’t feel comfortable doing so if they’re worried about the stability of their jobs.
“We will likely see some effects on the housing market going forward,” says Bachman, of John Burns. “Any time you lose jobs, there’s less demand for housing, for sale and for rent.”
But few expect another downturn would cut as deep as the Great Recession—or last nearly as long. Once the Fed gets inflation under control, it’s expected to cut rates to combat any turbulence in the economy. That will likely lead to lower mortgage rates, giving the housing market a boost. Many economists believe the housing market will begin recovering as early as next year, if not the year after that.
“It’s not the calm before the storm,” says Gardner. “This was just an important reset in the housing market.”
Source: realtor.com