Commentary

“Home sales activity looks to be bottoming out in the first quarter of this year, before incremental improvements will occur,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

“2023 began as 2022 had ended, with U.S. home prices falling for the seventh consecutive month,” says Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director at S&P DJI.

Due to stronger economic performance than expected in Q1, Fannie Mae has pushed back the predicted recession to start sometime in the second half of the year.

The Hartford Home Fire Index, published by The Hartford, a property and casualty insurance provider, has released its third index tracking the probability of home fires in the top 150 metropolitan areas.

Many parties work in concert in the lead-up to building and selling a home; zoning is one area that can be reformed to make affordable housing a feasible goal.

The S&P CoreLogic index fell on both a monthly and yearly basis. Click through to see the research and commentary from Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director at S&P DJI.

However, while monthly numbers show a short-term improvement, the National Association of Realtors found the market to be down nearly 25% year-over-year.

Even with a recession in the forecast, the economy appears to be an unexpectedly good place to start off the year according to Fannie Mae.

U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing in February on the topic of “The State of Housing 2023” with three highly placed witnesses to give testimony to the committee addressing current challenges and forecasts of what to expect in real estate this year.

“Housing affordability is the result of the tug-of-war between purchasing power, which is the product of household income and mortgage rates, and nominal house price growth,” said First American Economist Ksenia Potapov.