彭博播客：美国房贷利率高企致刚需购房者入市困难

Yeah. You know, uh, I was interested in seeing, you know, who might be sitting on the sidelines. You mentioned interest rates up, uh, at 6.75%, you know, and it's home sales have been, uh, low compared to historic levels. So we want to take a look and see. Are there is there a pool of shadow buyers out there? And we defined shadow buyers as, uh, young adults between 25 and 39 who are living with their parents and who are working, earning money to try and evaluate.

Look. Is this a pool of buyers who are living strategically at home to save money, and who might come out and enter the housing market here in the next year or two? So that's how we define shadow buyers. But spoiler alert, it is really tough, even for those young adults who are saving money by living at home and working to get into this current housing market. Are they waiting for interest rates to drop? I mean, Paul mentioned his 6% mortgage rate.

Was he, uh, ahead of his time? Is this the new normal, or do you think rates will go back down to maybe what some of the shadow buyers are hoping to see? I think the shadow buyers are hoping for affordability to improve, but I don't think they're pegging their hopes on, uh, interest rates alone. I think what we're going to need to see is an easing of interest rates, slowing price growth so that price home prices start to grow at the same pace as incomes.

And as we've seen, young adults are just waiting longer to get into the housing market, waiting for their incomes to increase, waiting for more time to save for a down payment. So I think it's a combination of things and lower rates. Even, uh, a few basis points are not going to make that much of a difference. And I don't expect us to see rates down in the fives any time soon. So I think these shadow buyers are really sort of playing a long game at this point.

Existing home sales have been a challenge. We're just not seeing the turnover, um, that maybe this market needs because, boy, I can't afford to get out of my house when I'm sitting on a 3% mortgage and then try to even I want to move down to Florida or whatever it is and have a mortgage with a six handle on it. That doesn't seem like a good deal. So, I mean, how do you fix that conundrum? Well, you know, it's interesting.

I don't think rate lock is the problem anymore. Right. And so you you mentioned, uh, and the lead in that, uh, that you have an interest rate at 6%. More and more homeowners actually have an interest rate at 6% or higher. Uh, it's sort of evened out. It's about the same share that have a rate of, uh, 3% or lower. And so, uh, rate look, is not the problem. I don't think anymore. We're starting to see, uh, listings outpacing pending sales.

We're seeing strong new listings growth relative to a year ago. Sellers are starting to make the move, uh, because of changing family and financial situations. It's just as we head into the fall, it's buyers who are, uh, really sort of in this, uh, affordability trap. And it's really challenging for them to get into the market right now. Isn't that isn't part of the affordability trap directly related to interest rates, though?

Because if you are selling a house and you know, the interest rates are, I guess relatively in the very recent, uh, past, relatively speaking, high, you have to price your house in accordance with that. Don't you have to be pretty aware? I mean, you can't necessarily price it as high as you could have when interest rates were lower. That's fair. But we actually haven't seen, uh, as much, uh, price reduction as we might have expected.

And I think part of that is because we're in this housing market where there's really sort of two pools of buyers we have the higher end of the market is still doing quite well. Uh, we're still seeing the luxury end and the high income buyers who are very active in the market, they're less price sensitive, less interest rate sensitive. So you raise a good point. But we're really seeing those price adjustments in the entry level and mid-tier market.

Uh, as opposed to the the higher end market. And I think we're going to see more of that price cutting if interest rates don't come down. Um, but so far on the average, prices are remaining pretty resilient in a lot of markets regionally. Where is the best value out there, do you think? This question is always tricky for me because, uh, the best value is where, uh, you as a potential homeowner, uh, want to live, uh, need to live for job and family and financial reasons.

I think what is happening is home buyers are having to, uh, expand their search, whether to different neighborhoods outside of their preferred neighborhood. We're seeing a lot of opportunities in the condo market in many locales where condo inventory is much higher than single family inventory. So when it comes to inventory overall, of course, the West and the South are seeing much stronger increases in inventory. But frankly, if that's not what your job in your family is, it's a little bit hard to say that that's the best opportunity for you.