Today's top story: A real estate 'reckoning is at hand' in 2023!

Hi everybody, Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee the sale of your home or I'll buy it!

Ok, so every week, I share market data to keep you informed with the local real estate market.

Here is this week’s Boca Market Watch.

First, Single Family Homes:

This past week, 17 new listings, that sucks, and ranging in price from $549K to $4.5M! 7 homes back on the market, while 29 homes listed took a price decrease and 2 sellers raised their asking price. I guess they just can't read, huh?! And another horrible week, with just 17 different properties under contract, and 15 going pending! 23 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright And an abysmal week with 25 homes sold, ranging from $395K to $4.3M!

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

47 new listings, not good, and ranging from $90 Grand to $2.3 Million. 9 units came back on the market, 30 properties with a price decrease, and 3 sellers with an increase. And continuing to follow the downward trend, just a terrible week with only 16 different properties under contract, and 6 going pending, - by far, the worst week in years! 15 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired. 28 closed sales this week, that's about a quarter of what used to be a normal week, and ranging in price from $84K to $1.5M, woah!

Here's what's making news right now.

Economists and other housing experts predict the market will be more balanced among buyers and sellers. Home prices won't change much while mortgage interest rates will continue to dip.

While the slowing housing market has some expecting a crash in 2023, next year will likely be more humdrum, albeit still painful as the market continues to cool before an expected uptick in 2024, according to economic experts across the real estate industry.

In general, experts predict a more balanced market between homebuyers and sellers where home prices will either flatten, dip slightly or rise slightly while mortgage interest rates continue to decrease after a rapid rise this year and inventory bumps up marginally, but not enough to make up for affordability challenges.

Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for Bright MLS said, “The housing market has been running at a frenzied pace for the past two-and-a-half years, but the reckoning is at hand. In the second half of 2022, high home prices and fast-rising mortgage rates stalled market activity. As demand dries up and price expectations are re-set, home prices in most local markets will be dropping from their pandemic peaks.”


According to Taylor Marr, deputy chief economist at Redfin, continued high mortgage rates are likely to make the 2023 housing market the slowest since 2011. He was quoted in a Redfin report as saying, “We expect home sales to sink to their lowest level in more than a decade in 2023 as high mortgage rates keep housing costs up and prevent people from moving”.

Fannie Mae is expecting a “modest recession” in 2023 with a predicted negative 0.5 percent in GDP growth before the economy expands by 2.2 percent in 2024.

Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae said, “The economy caught its breath in the second half of 2022, but that doesn’t change our expectation that it will run out of air in early 2023 via a mild recession. We expect housing to continue to slow, even though mortgage rates have come down recently. Home purchases remain unaffordable for many due to the rapid rise in rates over the last year and the fact that house prices, though certainly slowing and in some places declining, remain elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels."


Danielle Hale, chief economist for Realtor.com, anticipates that everyone in the housing market — sellers, buyers, and renters — “may be underwhelmed” next year in what she called a “nobody’s-market”, friendly to neither buyers nor sellers. “The slowdown in home sales transactions that began as mortgage rates surged in 2022 is expected to continue, leading to a moderation in home price growth and tipping housing market balance away from sellers,” Hale said.


So that's what the experts think. What does it all mean? Home shoppers will enjoy advantages such as a growing number of homes for sale, but prices and mortgage costs will remain high, challenging affordability at a time when overall budgets continue to be squeezed.


And in related news, the Census Bureau reports that Florida is the fastest-growing state in the country! Last year, our population increased by 1.9%, or just over 400,000 new permanent residents. That's about 4 X the national average. Why aren't we #1 every year? In a word - Nevada. For 36 of the past 76 years, Nevada has held the top spot. Even so, we have nearly 1200 new residents every day moving into our state! Assuming that continues, these new additions could provide enough demand to prop up our weakening real estate market. We'll just have to see how it plays out.