Amity, Oregon Real Estate

10/15/2024

Consumer housing sentiment has reached a 30-month high, driven by newfound optimism regarding mortgage interest rates, according to Fannie Mae’s September Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI). The September HPSI, released This Week in Real Estate, reflects consumers’ current views and future expectations of housing market conditions. The index has increased by 9.4 points compared to the same period last year. Additionally, inflation has dropped to its lowest level since early 2021. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for September decreased by 0.1 percentage point from August, resulting in a year-over-year increase of 2.4 percent, the smallest annual rise since February 2021. On an annual basis, shelter costs rose by 4.9 percent in September. Although rising housing costs significantly contribute to overall inflation, the annual rate of shelter inflation continues to decelerate, down from 5.2 percent in August and significantly lower than its peak of 8.2 percent in March 2023. Below are key events from the second week of October impacting our business:

INFLATION SLOWS IN SEPTEMBER. Inflation continued to ease in September and remained at a 3-year low as shelter costs continued to moderate. Shelter costs, the main driver of inflation since early 2023, saw their annual growth rate fall below 5% for the first time since February 2022. With the Fed beginning its easing cycle with a half-point cut last month, lower interest rates could help ease some pressure on the housing market. Though shelter remains the primary driver of inflation, the Fed has limited ability to address rising housing costs, as these increases are driven by a lack of affordable supply and increasing development costs. Additional housing supply is the primary solution to tame housing inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 0.2% in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, the same increase as in July and August. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the “core” CPI increased by 0.3% in September, the same increase as in August. During the past twelve months, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI rose by 2.4% in September, following a 2.5% increase in August. This was the slowest annual gain since February 2021. The “core” CPI increased by 3.3% over the past twelve months, following a 3.2% increase in August.
Full Story… EYEONHOUSING

HOUSING CONFIDENCE INCHES HIGHER AMID RECORD-HIGH OPTIMISM TOWARD MORTGAGE RATES. The Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI) increased 1.8 points in September to 73.9, its highest level in more than two years, as consumers reported survey-high optimism that mortgage rates will decline over the next 12 months. The HPSI is up 9.4 points compared to the same time last year. “Although most consumers continue to think it’s a ‘bad time’ to buy a home, the recent shift in attitude toward mortgage rates is pushing overall housing sentiment higher, and a growing share are now pointing to high home prices rather than high mortgage rates as the primary sticking point for affordability,” said Mark Palim, Fannie Mae Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Increased positivity that mortgage rates will continue to fall has driven the HPSI to a 30-month high, but we’ve yet to see consumers’ newfound rate optimism translate into a meaningful increase in home sales activity. Palim continued: “Notably, housing sentiment among renters, a common source of first-time homebuyers, has improved at approximately the same pace as homeowners. Over the last three months, the share of renters believing it’s a good time to buy a home has risen from 13% to 20%, while the share expecting mortgage rates to fall has risen from 16% to 30%. While these numbers are still relatively low, we think the improvement may signal that some potential homebuyers who have been waiting for mortgage rates to come down may be closer to coming off the sidelines, despite their ongoing concerns about home prices.”
Full Story… FANNIEMAE

HOW STRONG JOBS REPORT AFFECTED MORTGAGE RATES. The stronger-than-expected jobs report played havoc with mortgage rates this week, driving them to their highest level since the start of September, Freddie Mac said. The 20 basis point weekly gain was the largest since April, Sam Khater, Freddie Mac chief economist, said in a press release. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaged 6.32% for Oct. 10, up from 6.12% one week prior, Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey reported. But it was still 125 basis points lower than the 7.57% it was at for the same week last year. Despite the uncertain environment, the Mortgage Bankers Association expects rates to fluctuate between 6% and 6.5% for the next several months, Bob Broeksmit, president and CEO said in a Thursday morning comment on the Weekly Application Survey.
Full Story… NATIONALMORTGAGENEWS

08/12/2024

New law is a must! Can’t show a home without a buyer’s agent agreement

06/10/2024

Market TrendsEconomists Predict No Interest Rate Cut Amidst Labor Market ConditionsBy BHHSNW - June 10, 202403ShareFacebook Twitter Google+ Pinterest WhatsApp The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported This Week in Real Estate that the economy added 272,000 jobs in May, surpassing expectations. Ec...

06/10/2024

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported This Week in Real Estate that the economy added 272,000 jobs in May, surpassing expectations. Economists now believe the Federal Reserve will maintain the current federal funds interest rate at its June meeting and may postpone any planned rate cuts for this year. The unemployment rate increased slightly to 4%, continuing a 30-month streak of unemployment at or below that level. Although the overall labor force participation rate declined to 62.5% from the previous month’s 62.7%, the participation among prime-age workers (ages 25-54) rose to 83.6%, the highest level in 22 years. According to ATTOM, lenders issued just under 1.3 million residential mortgages in Q1 2024, down from nearly 1.4 million in Q4 2023. The total dollar amount lent to homeowners in Q1 2024 was $405.6 billion, compared to $426.1 billion in Q4 2023 and $424.6 billion in Q1 2023. Despite inventory growth, housing supply remained approximately 40% below pre-pandemic levels in May. A supply-demand imbalance has a predictable consequence: rising prices. The result of continued home price appreciation is homeowner equity growth near record high during the first quarter of 2024. Below are a few newsworthy events from the first week of June that influence our business:

US HOMEOWNERS SEE EQUITY INCREASE TO NEARLY ALL-TIME HIGH IN Q1. CoreLogic released Homeowner Equity Report (HER) for the first quarter of 2024 showing that U.S. homeowners with mortgages (which account for roughly 62% of all properties) saw home equity increase by 9.6% year over year, representing a collective gain of $1.5 trillion and an average increase of $28,000 per borrower since the first quarter of 2023. This brought total net homeowner equity to more than $17 trillion at the end of Q1 2024. “With home prices continuing to reach new highs, owners are also seeing their equity approach the historic peaks of 2023, close to a total of $305,000 per owner,” said Dr. Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Importantly, higher prices have also lifted some 190,000 homeowners out of negative equity, leaving only about 1.8% of those with mortgages underwater.”
Full Story… CORELOGIC

U.S. ADDS A MUCH-BETTER-THAN EXPECTED 272,000 JOBS IN MAY. The U.S. economy added far more jobs than expected in May, countering fears of a slowdown in the labor market and likely reducing the Federal Reserve’s impetus to lower interest rates. Nonfarm payrolls expanded by 272,000 for the month, up from 165,000 in April and well ahead of the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 190,000, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. At the same time, the unemployment rate rose to 4%, the first time it has breached that level since January 2022. Economists had been expecting the rate to stay unchanged at 3.9% from April. Following the jobs report, traders in the fed funds futures market reduced the possibility of a cut in September to about 56%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure. That was down about 12 percentage points from Thursday. The market-implied probability of a second move lower in December fell to about a coin flip after being around 68% a day ago. The Fed has not lowered rates since the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and hiked 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023. The benchmark federal funds rate is currently targeted between 5.25%-5.5%.
Full Story… CNBC

MORTGAGE RATES FALL BUT ONLY SLIGHTLY AS HOME PRICES CONTINUE RISING. Mortgage interest rates fell this past week, but not by much. Rates for 30-year mortgages averaged just a hair under 7% at 6.99%, Freddie Mac reported in its weekly rates report. "Mortgage rates retreated this week given incoming data showing slower growth," Freddie Mac Chief Economist Sam Khater said. "Rates are just shy of seven percent, and we expect them to modestly decline over the remainder of 2024.” Nationally, home prices jumped by 0.6% in May, according to a Realtor.com report.
Full Story… FOXBUSINESS

Search homes for sale, new construction homes, apartments, and houses for rent. See property values. Shop mortgages.

05/09/2024

It happens!

11/01/2023

This sums it up!

Nothing yesterday, maybe there's something today... 😂😂😂

02/15/2023

Good Morning!
Mortgage rates ticked up slightly This Week in Real Estate, but they continue to remain well below their November 2022 peak. While home sales are projected to decline in 2023, housing experts believe prices are expected to remain stable due to more demand for homes than the number of homes available. The National Association of Realtors reports that unsold inventory sits just 2.7-months’ supply at the current sales pace. The U.S. is short of anywhere between 3.8 million and 5 million homes and counting. According to Freddie Mac, the U.S. was short of 3.8 million homes, as of the last quarter of 2020, up from 2.5 million two years earlier. The National Association of Realtors put that figure at 5.24 million in 2021. Below are a few newsworthy events from the second week of February that influence our business:

* Mortgage Rates Rise on Inflation Concerns. Mortgage rates rose this week after four weeks of declines, as a stronger-than-expected jobs report suggested the Federal Reserve would continue hiking its benchmark lending rate in its battle against inflation. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.12% in the week ending February 9, up from 6.09% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. After climbing for most of 2022, mortgage rates have been trending downward since November, as various economic indicators continue to show inflation may have peaked. “Mortgage rates are likely to continue moving up and down in a narrow range for the next few weeks,” said George Ratiu, Realtor.com’s manager of economic research. “Purchase activity that was put on hold last year due to the quick runup in rates is gradually coming back as rates ease and housing demand remains strong, driven by supportive demographics and the ongoing strength in the job market,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s vice president and deputy chief economist. “With interest rates still running well below the 7% range we saw in the fall, the psychological shock of the 2022 rate jump is wearing off for buyers, leading to a favorable adjustment in expectations,” said Ratiu.
Full Story… https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/homes/mortgage-rates-february-2/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0pxUJRlpf7GI8f4SUyXoBs3S3CyoE2w2IsW8Zasheab_oYErBOecM2Z0g

* Home Prices Have Surged 42% in The Last 3 Years. The National Association of REALTORS®’ latest quarterly housing report shows that home price growth is cooling - though that doesn’t mean prices are falling. The national median price for a single-family existing home rose 4% in the fourth quarter of 2022, reaching $378,700. That’s a much slower pace than the 8.6% increase in the previous quarter. Further, only 18% of metro markets posted double-digit price gains in the fourth quarter of 2022, compared to 46% in the previous quarter, NAR data shows. “A slowdown in home prices is underway and welcomed, particularly as the typical home price has risen 42% in the past three years,” says NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. Still, “even with a projected reduction in home sales this year, prices are expected to remain stable in the vast majority of markets due to extremely limited supply. Moreover, there are signs that buyers are returning as mortgage rates decline, even with inventory levels near historic lows.”
Full Story… https://www.nar.realtor/magazine/real-estate-news/home-prices-have-surged-42-in-the-last-3-years

* Housing Market Predictions For 2023: When Will Home Prices Become Affordable? As we begin to move through 2023, housing experts maintain a watchful eye on the economy, which continues to be pulled in all directions by high inflation, steep interest rates, ongoing geopolitical uncertainties and recession fears, to name a few. Nevertheless, there are indicators that a housing market correction is underway. For one, mortgage rates are showing signs of ease, with rates now less than double what they were a year ago. “It seems we have already reached the bottom of the low home sales activity,” says Nadia Evangelou, senior economist and director of forecasting for the NAR. “And with mortgage rates stabilizing near 6%, we expect the housing market to turn around in 2023…and rebound in 2024.” Low housing inventory has been a challenge since the 2008 housing crash when the construction of new homes plummeted. It hasn’t fully recovered - and won’t in 2023. Housing supply remaining stuck at near historic lows has propped up demand compared to other downturns, consequently sustaining higher home prices. “I believe that we’re likely to see low inventory continue to vex the housing market throughout 2023,” says Rick Sharga, executive vice president of market intelligence at ATTOM Data. And with 70% of homeowners sitting on a mortgage rate of 4% or less, Sharga says we’re unlikely to see an inundation of homes soon. “The bottom line is that there really isn’t a likely scenario that leads to inventory levels approaching historically normal numbers in 2023, which means that prospective homebuyers are still going to have to work hard to find something to buy,” says Sharga. Due, in part, to the ongoing inventory problem keeping home prices elevated, many economists predict the housing market is more likely to correct itself from the double-digit percentage jumps seen in home prices the past few years rather than crash.
Full Story… https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/housing-market-predictions/

Skyrocketing interest rates through most of 2022 put some much-needed pressure on the housing market after home prices hit record highs across the nation. However, mortgage rates have gradually declined from December to early February. Even so, many economists remain mixed about whether home prices

12/27/2022

Merry Christmas Eve!

12/27/2022

And it is so much fun!

True story

12/05/2022

This is why I choose to have professional photos of my listings😂😂

Nailed it! 🎯