Housing experts are looking at the Biden Administration's early-September announcement related to increasing affordable housing in America and how myriad policy tweaks, rule adjustments and program expansions might affect the market in months to come.
Jeremy Sicklick, Co-Founder and CEO of HouseCanary, a real estate valuation brokerage whose team of economists regularly researches and reports industry trends, says that while real estate un-affordability remains a challenge, the market is gradually finding more balance, and he says the Biden administration's plan could benefit homeowners, renters, builders, and housing at large.
"While properties across the U.S. continue to sell at record high prices, our latest data reveals that the breakneck pace of housing price growth has likely seen its peak and we expect it to decline in the coming months," Sicklick says. "Monthly single-family listing prices have plateaued since May, while closed prices continue to edge marginally higher on a month-over-month basis. Additionally, the sale-to-list price ratio has fallen slightly from its peak in June, bolstering our view that home prices—while still remarkably high—are beginning to show signs of cooling.
"Further, the Biden administration's recently announced steps to increase the supply of affordable homes may significantly help U.S. homeowners and renters, who have suffered through a housing affordability crisis over the past year-and-a-half as homebuilding struggled to gain traction and the cost of materials ballooned."
HouseCanary just published its Market Pulse [1] report which covers 22 listing-derived metrics and compares data between August 2020 and August 2021—the analysts conduct this ongoing review using the company's proprietary data, according to the report.
The full Market Pulse [2] report is available at housecanary.com. Below are a few key takeaways:
- Since August 2020, there have been 3,181,376 net new listings placed on the market, which is an 11.2% increase versus the same period in 2019.
- Broken down by home price, 18.6% of new listings are homes in the $0-$200,000 range, 41.5% are in the $200,000-$400,000 range, 20.3% are in the $400,000-$600,000 range, 13% are in the $600,000 to $1 million range, and 6.6% are homes priced over $1 million.
- Percent change in net new listing activity over past one year versus the same period in 2019, broken down by home price—homes priced between $200-$400k are up by 2.7%, homes ranging $400-$600k are up by 35.8%, those between $600k and $1 million went up 58.1%, and homes priced over $1 million are up almost 65%.
- However, homes priced less than $200,000 are down 16.7%.
- For the week ending August 27, the median price of all single-family listings in the U.S. was $381,728, a 7.7% increase year-over-year.
- For the same week, the median closed price of single-family listings in the U.S. was $390,768,a 17.0% increase year-over-year.
- The median price of all single-family listings in the U.S. is down 1.9% month-over-month and the median price of closed listings has increased by 0.7% month-over-month.
- The competitive market environment persists amid inventory deficit, with nationwide median days on market down 18.4% year-over-year.