Whether you’re already a homeowner or looking to become one, the recent headlines about home prices may leave you with more questions than answers. News stories are talking about home prices falling, raising concerns about a repeat of what happened to prices in the crash in 2008.
Based on those headlines, one of the questions that’s on many minds is: how much will home prices decline? But you may not realize that expert forecasters aren’t calling for a free fall in prices. If you look at the latest data, there’s a case to be made that the most significant portion of month-over-month price depreciation nationally may already be behind us – and even those numbers weren’t substantial declines on the national level. Instead of how far they will drop, the question becomes: have home values hit bottom?
Let’s take a look at the latest data from several reputable industry sources (see chart below):
The chart above looks at the most recent reports from Case-Shiller, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Black Knight, and CoreLogic. It shows how, on a national scale, home values have changed month-over-month since January 2022. November and December numbers have yet to come out.
Let’s focus on what the red numbers tell us. The red numbers are the change in home values over the last four months that have been published. And if we isolate the previous four months, what the data shows is, in each case, home price depreciation peaked in August.
While that doesn’t guarantee home price depreciation has hit bottom, it confirms prices aren’t in free fall, and it may be an early signal that the worst is already behind us. As the numbers for November and December are released, data will be able to validate this national trend further.
Bottom Line
Home prices month-over-month have depreciated for the past four months, but there’s a solid case to be made that the worst may be behind us. If you have questions about what’s happening with home prices in our local market, let’s connect.
