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The housing market has seen a bit a reprieve as mortgage rates have fallen to 15-month lows with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage falling below 7%, but is there more that potential home buyers need to worry about?
Zillow Group CEO Jeremy Wacksman joins Market Domination to give insight the state of the housing market and what investors and home buyers should know moving forward.
"The housing market is challenged. It's low volumes and pretty high price increases. And what that means is really tough affordability for buyers, especially first -time home buyers. You put those two things with high interest rates we have and it just makes it tough for a home buyer. So that's why you're seeing such low volume."
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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino
I am curious to get your take on on just the overall health of the housing market, Jeremy, where it is and where you see it headed.
Yeah, the housing market is challenged. It's low volumes and pretty high price increases. And what that means is really tough affordability for buyers, especially first time home buyers. You put those two things with the high interest rates we have, and it just makes it tough for home buyers. That's why you're seeing such low volume, right? Despite all that, we're able to grow our share and we're able to help more folks start that process when it works for them. But for sure, the last few years, you've seen really low transaction volumes while prices have increased.
Jeremy, I'm curious about what you saw in terms of activity over the course of this week when we saw mortgages dipping to a 15 month low. Do you see that driving more activity on your platform?
You know, it's interesting. Usually, rate shocks and rate movements is what drives a pullback in activity, kind of in either direction. But I would say we've had so many of those in the last couple of years that buyers and sellers have kind of found this as the new normal. And the demand we have in the marketplace generally, we have a lot of pent-up demand from sellers who are stuck in their homes and stuck in, you know, locked in on a rate that they don't want to to move out from. And then we have that high rate really squeezing buyers and squeezing their affordability. So the demand coil has really been loaded on both sides. And so any movement you see in rates will help over time. But right now, we have a lot of folks waiting, I think, for that relief.
