High home prices and even higher mortgage rates; that’s how most people would describe last year’s housing market—one that by some estimates was the least affordable since the 1980s.
It’s simple: Home prices skyrocketed during the pandemic and rose steadily last year despite mortgage rates more than doubling. Those high mortgage rates, having risen from historic lows, kept homeowners from selling, which further exacerbated already tight supply and kept home prices up—all while chilling the housing market. The situation was so dire, and still may be aside from slight improvements in affordability, that Zillow’s chief economist, Skylar Olsen, released her own “wish list” for this year’s housing market.
Olsen’s “Housing Market Resolutions,” published last week, encompasses a number of topics, from the so-called lock-in effect, to the shortage of homes for sale across the country, to mortgage rates.
First on her list of wants is for more homeowners to sell their homes. The lock-in effect or “rate lock,” as she called it, made way for home values to continue rising in many places last year. The median U.S. home sales price rose to $431,000 in the third quarter of last year, which is down from its peak in 2022, but up almost 3% from the prior quarter. Additionally, home price growth rose nearly 5% in October on an annual basis, as measured by the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. The rising prices hit first-time buyers particularly hard, but there may be some relief ahead given that mortgage rates have fallen from their recent 8% peak to 6.77%.
“We have seen early signs that rate lock is easing,” Olsen wrote. “Compared to pre-pandemic norms, the deficit of new listings is shrinking. It’s important that this trend continues to bring the market better in balance.”
It was primarily the lock-in effect that pushed the number of existing home sales to their lowest level in more than a decade last year—but after five months of consecutive declines, existing home sales rose in November (they’re still down more than 7% on an annual basis).
Next up on the wish list is what most housing policy analysts and urban economists ask for: more housing. “Build, build, build,” Olsen wrote, emphasizing the importance of new construction.
“In the long run, adding to the housing stock through new construction is even more important than more inventory coming from existing homeowners because of the housing shortage,” she said, adding that the latest housing starts figures “show reasons for optimism.” But it will take a lot more than the recent surge in new construction to solve the nation’s housing crisis, as others have previously suggested.
As for mortgage rates, Olsen hopes they either hold steady or descend slowly. The recent dip in rates has fueled new activity, she said, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever go back to the 3% mortgage rates of the pandemic years. In December, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged, bringing an end to an aggressive hiking cycle to tame inflation that reached a four-decade high in June 2022. It also signaled three interest rate cuts this year. With that, mortgage rates could continue to fall.
Then there’s the rental market, which began to soften last year, partly owing to increased supply following a multifamily construction boom. Olsen’s wish is that rent growth, which stabilized at just over 3% on an annual basis as of December, remains at that level this year.
“Wild swings in rent growth over the course of the pandemic made it tough for renters to find stability and budget for their future, and higher costs have made it harder for renters trying to save for a down payment—it now takes the median household four years longer to save up a 10% down payment on a typical U.S. home,” Olsen wrote.
The last two points on her list are that the job market holds strong and remains stable, which she says is key to the economy achieving a “soft landing,” and that there are more ways for first-time homebuyers to build credit, so more people can attain homeownership.
It may or may not be wishful thinking, but Zillow’s economists have previously predicted that affordability this year will improve, but only slightly. They expect home values to fall 0.2% and the lock-in effect to ease as more homeowners accept the current market instead of waiting for mortgage rates to fall back to, or near, historic lows, according to Zillow’s 2024 housing market predictions published in late November.
