If housing in the first six months of 2013 could be summed up in one sentence, it would go something like this: Inventory is painfully tight, sales activity is surging and home prices have jumping.Now real estate experts are sounding off on the trends that will help shape the sector in the second half of 2013. Here’s what you need to know.
We Are Not Re-inflating A Bubble
Home prices have clocked double-digit price appreciation this year. Prices across the 20 major U.S. metro markets were 12% higher in April than they were a year before, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Other indexes have registered similarly dramatic gains. The last time prices appreciated by double digits were during the last housing bubble, motivating to question whether a new bubble is beginning to inflate.
It isn’t. The current pace of growth, while certainly unsustainable for long term market health, is nothing to worry about just yet. “Prices are now rising as fast as they were during the bubble years, but they are still low relative to the levels where they were back then,” explains Jed Kolko, chief economist of Trulia TRLA -0.05%, a San Francisco, Calif.-based real estate site.
He says prices are actually undervalued across most of the country, lower not just than their bubble-era peaks but also lower than their historical norms when adjusted for inflation.
“You can sort of think of it as we overshot on the way down and this is sort of a correction back to something more normal,” adds Mark Fleming, chief economist of CoreLogic, an Irvine, Calif.-based real estate data firm.
Economists do believe home prices will continue to climb throughout the rest of this year. CoreLogic CLGX -0.26% projects 2013 will end with a 6% increase over 2012. And Altos Research, a Mountain View, Calif.-based firm that tracks real estate data in real time, believes 2013’s final tally will be even higher. “Based on the actual supply and demand data, we are looking at 12% year-over-year,” says Michael Simonsen, chief executive of Altos Research.
Still, it won’t last. They say several variables, including increased inventory and higher mortgage rates, will slow the pace growth, which to be clear, is expected to stay positive over the next several years.
More Homes Coming To Market
I’ve said it before. The abnormally tight inventory levels fueling the return of such frothy buyer practices as bidding wars and contingency-free offers will slowly begin to ease. Inventory – which hit a 12-year low earlier this year — is already starting to increase and economists believe that trend will continue despite the season.
In June, there were 7% less home for sale than a year earlier, according to Realtor.com, but the monthly numbers offer the forward-looking story. From May to June, inventory grew by 4%; last year that monthly increase was only 1%.“We think inventory levels on a year-over-year basis will probably flatten out by the end of this year. That will be the first time since 2007,” says Errol Samuelson, president of Realtor.com. “I think you are actually going to see inventory growth on a year-on-year basis starting in the fall, but prices nonetheless will continue to appreciate.”
“Inventory started to expand very slowly maybe about four months ago,” echoes Kolko. “We will see that continue as rising prices help owners get back above water and help other sellers decide to take advantage of price appreciation.”
Still, some experts, like Simonsen, believe we could see housing shortages in the most sought after locales as far out as the next three years.
It will come down to new construction as more homebuilders continue to gain confidence and roll new developments. Kolko expects to see more construction commence in places like Texas, the Carolinas, Northern California and other parts of country where there’s strong housing demand, spurring job growth in both construction and housing-related industries.
Since an unusually large portion of new construction is multifamily, increased inventory won’t just help slow the rapid rate of home price growth but also quell rent prices. As many as six million more households will join the rental market ranks over the next decade, according to the National Association of Realtors; more building in major cities will help keep rents from rising too much in response.
Mortgage Rates Will Keep Climbing
Mortgage rates have risen over the past two months. A recent Trulia survey found rising rates was the number one worry among prospective buyers right now.
Economists believe rates will continue to climb, though at a much less feverish pace than recently witnessed. But while the higher rates – the 30-year fixed loan is about a point higher than it was in early May – mean borrowing is getting more expensive, housing won’t become unaffordable anytime soon. “Prices are still low relative to rents, so at 4.5%, it’s still more than a third cheaper to buy than to rent on average across the U.S.,” notes Kolko. “Not every market will remain cheaper to buy but on average… buying will stay cheaper than renting until rates reach 10.5% — a level we haven’t seen since 1990.”
Still, in metro areas like San Francisco, San Jose, New York and Honolulu, markets that were always historically cheaper to rent than buy before the downturn, rates will begin to tip the scale back toward renting once they rise above 5%.“Our estimation is it would take a 6.5% interest rate to bring affordability just back up to the level of early 2000s, [meaning] neither too affordable nor unaffordable,” adds CoreLogic’s Fleming. “There’s plenty of room for appreciation and rate increases before that and we will probably get a little of both.”
Rising rates may help fuel another trend in the coming months: an easing of tight mortgage credit that has hampered the purchases of even qualified homebuyers. As rates rise, refinancing business dries up, pushing lenders to begin ramping up the mortgages they underwrite for prospective buyers.
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