Housing market slows as prices and rates rise

Keith and Kylie Beukema were bracing for a year-long slog as they started hunting for a larger home in the Denver area, one of the hottest housing markets in the country the past few years.

Instead, it recently took them just two weeks to snag their four-bedroom dream house with mountain views in Thornton, paying $490,000 — $10,000 below asking price — after visiting just three other homes.

“I was nervous (the seller) would laugh us off,” Kylie, a 29-year-old physician, says. “We figured we’d get into bidding wars” and almost certainly have to pay above list price.

Denver epitomizes the slowdown taking hold this year in the nation’s housing market as mortgage rates climb, home prices rise and the new tax law limits the benefits of ownership. Those hindrances are adding to a longer-standing obstacle to sales — low home supplies — and making the housing market across most of the country more favorable for buyers — if they can afford the added costs.

“Definitely, there is a shift in the market,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR). “Buyer activity appears to be softening . ... Buyers have more chances.”

While housing is still largely a seller’s market, it’s becoming less so and the playing field should be roughly balanced between buyers and sellers by mid-next year, says Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist of research firm Veritas Urbis Economics.

“I think we are entering a (return) to normalcy,” McLaughlin says.

Nationally, existing home sales were down 2.1 percent through the first nine months of the year compared with the same period in 2017. The prior three years, annual gains for home sales totaled 6.3 percent, 3.8 percent and 2.7 percent, according to NAR. The NAR on Friday reported a 3.4 percent sales drop in September from the previous month to the lowest level since November 2015, though Hurricane Florence contributed to the weak showing.

Prices for homes are still rising in general, although more slowly. In September the median price was up 4.2 percent from a year earlier to $258,100, but that marked a pullback from gains of 5.1 percent and 5.7 percent in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Next year, NAR’s Yun expects flat sales and price increases of just 2 percent to 3 percent.

Of course, housing’s health varies by location. Generally, expensive Western markets such as Denver, San Francisco and Seattle that had been posting double-digit yearly price gains have slowed. More affordable areas such as Indianapolis and Grand Rapids, Michigan, are still seeing price increases accelerate. And reasonably priced southern markets such as Atlanta remain hot, says Daryl Fairweather chief economist of real estate brokerage Redfin.

But even the still-vibrant markets could cool by late next year as housing costs mount, says McLaughlin of Veritas Urbis Economics.

Last year, economists blamed softer sales gains on skimpy inventories that limited the pickings and drove up prices, discouraging some buyers. And the nation’s 4.4 month supply of homes in September — the time it would take to exhaust the stockpile assuming no units were added — was still below a normal six months or so. While low, that was up from 4.2 months a year ago, marking just the second annual increase since 2015, according to NAR.

That’s largely because builders have responded to the shortages and put up more houses, mostly higher-priced units that can offset sharply rising labor and material costs.

Nationally, rising mortgage rates are playing a bigger role and compounding the effect of U.S. home prices that are up more than 50 percent since their 2012 bottom.

Fixed 30-year mortgage rates averaged 4.85 percent for the week ending Oct. 18, according to Freddie Mac, up from 3.88 percent a year ago. That bumps up the monthly payment on a typical $210,000 mortgage by about $125.

The higher rates are “making many people scared,” from first-time homebuyers to trade-up buyers seeking more expensive homes, Yun says.

The new tax law is also chilling some sales. It caps the deduction for property and state and local income taxes at $10,000. And it limits the mortgage interest deduction at home values up to $750,000, down from $1 million. The changes are tempering sales in states with more high-end houses, such as California, Connecticut, Illinois and New York, Yun says.

Meanwhile, pent-up demand from first-time homebuyers — who have driven the market the past couple of years — may be starting to peter out, says Aaron Terrazas, chief economist of Zillow, a real estate research firm.