June 12, 2023

Should I Wait to Purchase a Home?

There are at least five well-known sources of home price appreciation that are all showing a trend of increasing home prices. The Case Shiller Home Price Index, which is one the industry’s best gauges of home price appreciation, showed that home prices rose 0.4% in the month of March. This is after rising 0.2% in February. The Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices rose by 0.6% in March after rising 0.7% in February and 0.1% in January. This makes home prices now 0.7% higher from the peak in June of 2022! CoreLogic reported a 1.6% increase, Black Knight showed a 0.5% increase, and Zillow showed a 0.9% increase.

While this can be challenging for homebuyers, it is undeniably showing the strength and opportunity in the housing market and it is accelerating. It appears that home prices aren’t slowing down, but is it worth it to purchase even in a higher interest rate environment?

Zillow recently published an article showing forecasts of 4% home appreciation in the year 2023. While 4% does not seem like that much, it is very meaningful for wealth creation. If a customer bought a $500,000 home and saw a 4% annual appreciation, they would gain $20,000 in that year alone in appreciation. Also, if that same customer put down 20% or $100,000, that means that in one year they would have a 20% gain on their investment. Also, Zillow and Pulsenomics released their forecast for the next five years and it showed home appreciation at 23%, which is very significant. If someone were to buy a $500,000 home and saw 23% appreciation over the next 5 years, they would gain $115,000 in appreciation.

While interest rates are higher than they were a few years ago, in many cases, and based on these forecasts, it appears that it could cost more to wait and not purchase since there is such tight inventory and such high levels of demand even in the face of higher interest rates.

Sources :

https://bit.ly/3J9uOuz

https://bit.ly/3P0HAiH

By: Jon Iacono
A Family

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