Housing Prices Are About To Blow Past Their All-Time Highs

Remember the fun pandemic passtime of searching real estate listings on platforms such as Zillow (Z) and Redfin (RDFN)? Back in the days of time on our hands, government stimulus and 3% mortgage interest rates.

Of course, it wasn’t all good. You can certainly pin some of the blame for inflation on the federal money-printing machine. And at least some of the folks who bought homes and bolted for the suburbs regret their decisions. 

Many feel like prisoners in their own homes, trapped and unable to make a move because doing so would mean trading in their low rate for the new 30-year mortgage interest rate benchmark of 7-plus percent. 

For a while now, The Juice has been predicting a return to record high housing prices. You could argue we’re already there. The only thing we got wrong was that the big trigger for renewed skyrocketing prices would be lower rates. We haven’t seen that, yet prices continue to move higher. Just wait until rates come down. 

Because the latest data and analysis from Redfin isn’t pretty if you’re waiting come off of the sidelines:

The median U.S. home-sale price increased 5% from a year earlier during the four weeks ending April 14, bringing it to $380,250—just $3,095 shy of June 2022’s all-time high. The combination of high mortgage rates and prices have brought homebuyers’ median monthly housing payment to a record $2,775, up 11% year over year.

Un-freaking-believable. 

To spend no more than 30% of your income to cover the payment on the median-priced home, you need to earn $9,250 a month, or $111,000 annually. And that’s just on the median-priced home. 

Up the price of the house to just $650,000 and, with 20% down, you’re looking at a payment of $4,471, including taxes and insurance. For this payment to be affordable, you need to make $14,903 a month, or $178,836 annually. 

Does anybody else think this is not only crazy, but scary and unstainable? Where’s the outcry over this? It should be a national emergency. But The Juice feels like we’re among the few sounding the alarm urgently on this. 

Probably because so many homeowners are sitting in homes with record values amid a mortgage they secured at a low rate. It’s a big voting bloc. So who really cares what happens to Gen Z, millennials and some people older than that? Hopefully, they’ll inherit some money when their family members start dying off. 

Is this really the attitude in Washington? 

Or is it the take you hear from Main Street sometimes that Gen Z and millennials are too lazy? If they worked hard enough, they’d be able to make things happen the way Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa did. 

We think this is all a bunch of garbage. And that we need to boost the housing crisis to the nation’s top priority. There’s literally nothing more near-term important, followed by overall inflation. 

Anyhow, another datapoint from Redfin:

• 29% of homes sold for above the final list price over the last four weeks. 

The other day we told you about the high number of cash buyers and people putting outsized down payments down on homes. 

Get ready. Because all of these and other factors are coalescing. They’re getting ready to explode in housing prices reaching prices we never thought possible. When rates come — even a little — it’s going to get even uglier. 

The other day, Realtor.com put out a list of markets where the median home price is less than $300,000. 

They are: Birmingham, Alabama; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Rochester, New York; and St. Louis, Missouri. Even in these markets prices are up nicely year over year. 

If you’re going to act, you might not only need to act fast. You might need to act fast in places like this that are still somewhat affordable. Though, we’d be remiss to point out that you’ll pay well over the national median in the best neighborhoods in any of these seven cities. 

The Bottom Line: The idea that home prices have come down nationally is little more than a meaningless number. Some hot markets cooled off slightly, but remain super expensive. Out of reach for most homebuyers. The up-and-coming markets, by and large, are strong. This is a recipe for a worsening of the housing crisis. 

If The Juice was in the housing market right now, we would be buying on, say, Buffalo’s West Side. In ten years, that part of the country will be the new Portland or Austin. Mark our words. 

You can likely come up with similar examples in places you’re familiar with. Maybe even in some of the cities on Realtor.com’s sub-$300,000 list. We’d love to hear your thoughts via the feedback link at the bottom of this page.

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