Experts Agree: Home Prices WILL Continue to Rise
Some believe that the combined effects of the new tax code and rising mortgage rates will have an adverse impact on residential real estate prices in 2018. However, the clear majority of recently surveyed housing experts believe that home values will continue to rise this year.
What is the Home Price Expectation Survey?
Each quarter, Pulsenomics surveys a nationwide panel of economists, real estate experts and investment & market strategists. Those surveyed include experts such as:
- Daniel Bachman, Senior Manager, U.S. Economics at Deloitte Services, LP
- Kathy Bostjancic, Head of U.S. Macro Investors Service at Oxford Economics
- David Downs, Real Estate Finance Professor at VCU
- Edward Pinto, Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
- Albert Saiz, Director at MIT Center for Real Estate
Where do these experts see home values headed in 2018?
Here is a breakdown of where they see home values twelve months from now:
- 21.6% believe prices will appreciate by 6% or more
- 71.6% believe prices will appreciate between 3 and 5.99%
- 5.7% believe prices will appreciate between 0 and 2.99%
- Only 1.1% believe prices will depreciate
Bottom Line
Almost ninety-nine percent of the top experts studying residential real estate believe that prices will appreciate this year, and over 93% believe home values will appreciate by at least 3%.
Read MoreUpsizing Your Home
Unfortunately, our homes don’t always grow with us. What may have initially worked fine for a single person, a young couple’s starter home, or a family with a newborn can quickly become too small as families expand and multiple generations live under one roof.
Remodeling and adding to your home is one option for creating more space, but it can be costly, and the size of your property may be prohibitive. That’s when moving to a bigger home becomes the best solution.
WHERE DO YOU NEED MORE SPACE?
The first thought when upsizing your home is to simply consider square footage, bedrooms, and bathrooms. But it’s important to take a more critical approach to how your space will actually be used. If you have younger children (or possibly more on the way), then focusing on bedrooms and bathrooms makes sense. But if your children are closer to heading off to college or starting their own families, it may be better to prioritize group spaces like the kitchen, dining room, living room, and outdoor space—it’ll pay off during the holidays or summer vacations, when everyone is coming to visit for big gatherings.
MOVING OUTWARD
If you need more space, but don’t necessarily want a more expensive home, you can probably get a lot more house for your money if you move a little further from a city center. While the walkability and short commutes of a dense neighborhood or condo are hard to leave beyond, your lifestyle—and preferences for hosting Thanksgiving, barbecues, and birthdays—might mean that a spacious home in the suburbs makes the most sense. It’s your best option for upsizing while avoiding a heftier price tag.
Read More5 Criteria for Pricing a Home
When you decide to put your home up for sale, one of the best ways to determine the asking price is to look at comparable sales. There’s rarely a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, so a pricing decision often relies on comparisons to several recent sales in the area. Here are five criteria to look for in a sales comparison.
- Location: Homes in the same neighborhood typically follow the same market trends. Comparing your home to another in the same neighborhood is a good start, but comparing it to homes on the same street or block is even better.
- Date of sale: It varies by location, but housing markets can see a ton of fluctuation in a short time period. It‘s best to use the most recent sales data available.
- Home build: Look for homes with similar architectural styles, numbers of bathrooms and bedrooms, square footage, and other basics.
- Features and upgrades: Remodeled bathrooms and kitchens can raise a home’s price, and so can less flashy upgrades like a new roof or HVAC system. Be sure to look for similar bells and whistles.
- Sale types: Homes that are sold as short sales or foreclosures are often in distress or sold at a lower price than they’d receive from a more typical sale. These homes are not as useful for comparisons.
Homes compete with other homes! Since Location is ALWAYS of primary consideration while buyers are comparing your home to others on the market, understanding the local dynamic of properties is also key – Age, builder, yard size, updates, deferred maintenance, traffic, environmental factors and yes schools. Data alone does not tell the whole story so location of the agent should also be a primary concern hen requesting a competitive market analysis. For best results, keep it local!
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