When it comes to the housing market, two big things matter most: interest rates and the number of homes available. You know, good old supply and demand. Neither one has been helping lately, so buying a house hasn’t been exactly easy. It’s still tricky, but we’re finally starting to see a bit of good news. Here’s the scoop!
Here are Five Fast Facts on real estate and interest rates:
- 📷 Snapshot - The average home price right now is around $361k, up almost 3% over last year (and about 50% higher than 5 years ago!), but the rate of increase is slowing. Average 30-year mortgage rates were 5.74%, the lowest they’ve been in a couple years. Put ‘em together and you have what could be called cautious reason for optimism about the housing market!
- 🪁 As A Kite - Real estate prices right now are so damn high! Like Snoop-Dogg-is-jealous high. That’s partly because there are about 4.5 million fewer homes than we need in this country.
- 📉 Hm, That’s Interesting - The Fed just cut interest rates for the second time (this time by .25%) in recent months because inflation is almost where they want it to be. Can they make it go negative for a while? Just asking for a friend…
- 👍 Survey Says - The markets loved the rate cut, and jumped to new highs after the announcement. This is good for our retirement accounts, but also a good sign of a better economy, which will help with home buying, too.
- ❓ Best Guess - Many analysts think 2025 should be a good year for the real estate market to get cooking again, with people who have been waiting until better rates and more options are available.
🔥Bottom line: How do you know what you should do? It’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing - people wait until things are favorable to jump back in, but it takes people jumping back in to make things favorable. So your guess is as good as literally anyone else’s on when to pull the trigger on your own situation. But at least you’ve got a few more facts now than you did five minutes ago, right? 😉
Are you looking to buy or sell a home anytime soon?
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