- Is it still a good time to buy a home in Orange County? People are hearing about the rapid home value appreciation, bidding wars, and many other reasons why it is currently such a great time to sell a home, which has discouraged many potential home buyers from entering the market. In this video we are going to discuss several reasons why waiting may not be a good idea. I will also be showing you several very interesting graphs that compares home values to the stock market, the Case-Shiller Home Price index, and the Home Price to Income Ratio. I’m Tim Hamilton and this is our August Housing Market Update for Orange County. If you’re thinking about buying or selling a home please feel free to call, text, or email me anytime. My contact information is in the description below.
- The current housing market strength can be simply boiled down to supply and demand. There are very few homes listed for sale compared to previous years, and buyer demand is strong compared to previous years. You would think that record high home prices would incentivize more people to sell their home, but so far, we have not seen that play out. Less homes coming on the market has been a developing trend for the last 10 years, which seems to have been accelerated due to recent events. From 2000 – 2008 there was an average of 1,347 more homes hitting the market every month compared to the last 10 years. That adds up to a total of 16,158 more homes every year, which is 39% more.
- The obvious question is why are fewer home owners deciding to not sell their home? Many homeowner’s have the Great Recession fresh in their minds. They have decided to stay put and create their “forever home” instead of stretching their finances by purchasing a larger home. In addition, many baby boomers have decided to stay put instead of downsizing. They have been selling at a much slower pace compared to previous generations. Finally, many potential home seller’s decided to not place their home on the market because they were worried that they wouldn’t be able to find another home to purchase. When there are less homes available to purchase, fewer homeowners decide to place their home on the market and the trend continues. Until this trend reverses, there will most likely not be enough homes on the market to satisfy the high buyer demand.
- Now we are going to shift gears and do something a little different by looking at a few national charts. First we have the Case-Shiller home price index, which tracks changes in the value of residential real estate nationally. If you want to learn more about this index I will have a link in the description below. You can see that we are well above the previous highs, just before the Great Recession. Home values have been increasing steadily since about 2012, but you can see that there has been a very sharp increase in home value appreciation that started last year. This chart ends at May 1st, 2021 so we are missing a couple months of data on the end. It will be interesting to see how long the chart can remain that steep.
- The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are the leading measures of U.S. residential real estate prices, tracking changes in the value of residential real estate nationally. For a list of additional indices, please refer to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index Methodology.
- I got the next few charts from longtermtrends.net This one compares stock market values to home values. This is the ratio of the S&P 500 to the Case-Shiller home price index, which is the chart we just looked at. As the chart goes higher, it means stocks are increasing in value faster than homes are increasing in value. You can see that this chart clearly shows the 1929 and 1999 stock market bubbles. You can see that recently this chart is increasing at a very sharp rate, despite the fact that home values are also increasing quickly at the same time.
- Next up we have the home price to income ratio. Historically, on average it would take about 5 times the median household income to purchase the average priced home. This ratio reached its peak at just over 7 in 2005, which was leading up to the Great Recession. As of March 31st of this year we are at about 6.5, and rising sharply. It is important to point at that this ratio can be substantially influenced by interest rates. As interest rates go down houses become more affordable, which tends to result in people spending more money on homes. So even though home prices may rise sharply, affordability may not be as impacted as you might imagine. Regardless, this is still an interesting chart to keep an eye on.
- If you want to read the most recent “Orange County Housing Report” by Steven Thomas please feel free to let me know and I can email you a copy. All of my contact information is in the description below. I will also leave links to all of the graphs I showed throughout this video if you want to keep an eye on them. If you’re thinking about buying or selling a home please feel free to call, text, or email me anytime. I am more than happy to answer your questions and help in any way that I can.
StellarQuest Real Estate – Lic. # 02077900
Tim Hamilton
Broker Associate – Realtor®
Lic. #01959966
(714) 486-4086
timsellsca@gmail.com
www.StellarQuest.com