Is Relief Spelled F-E-D?

Well, hello, everybody. Happy Tuesday and welcome to another one of our market update videos. My name is Steven meat, I'm your host, I am the broker and manager here at domicile real estate in Southern California. This is our first time buyer or entry level market segment. Market Update, we actually do two updates. I think I've talked about the reason why in the past, but the big reason is that the markets move very differently for entry level buyers than they do for either repeat buyers or highly a fluid buyers. This is especially true right now.

And I want to talk about something, you know, we obviously have a lot of people that we talked to him that we work with that are in various stages of being ready to buy a home, right and our goal always hear is, you know, we're on a mission to help California's renters become homeowners. It's something we say at the beginning of just about every one of our videos that as a first time buyer video. And one of the things that we have is a lot of people have really been looking for some relief over the last Gosh, realistically since COVID began, right. And they've been looking for something in the market that would ease whether it be prices, whether it would be inventory going up whether it would be interest rates more recently. And you know, I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news. The good news is I think relief is starting to arrive. And for astute buyers, this might make a lot of sense. The bad news is kind of like making a wish with a genie in a bottle. You know, the result isn't always exactly what you expected, or what you would hoped for, to get that relief.

And that's really what we're going to talk about this week. So let's go ahead and jump into it. And kind of jump into our slide deck here. And I can go over what I am talking about. So the first thing here, gosh, let's go back to our beginning. All right, it's close prices. And we've got remember this stuff, this data is four to six weeks old. So just just kind of bear that. Bear that in mind. You know, when you when you think about that here, so if you're taking a look at this, right? Gosh, I know they just changed around a little or little spotlighting thing. So we're going to do something Okay, there we go. Now we got an arrow, this this board is six weeks old.

And you'll notice that the intro level single family home, the blue line, has shot up. Not surprising that it's kind of indicative of some panic buyers. I think, though what's really interesting to me is looking at what's happening here, on the condo side of things, you know, that kind of crested here 582. But look at this, this is, to me, this is a definite little bit of a downward trend that we are seeing, since gosh, the end of July, where we kind of peaked and things have just been kind of moving in this direction on the condos. I think if you're a buyer was feeling priced out, I think that condo market is definitely one where there going to be some deals to be had. And again, you're going to find a little bit of relief. I know most buyers the relief they were looking for was massive fed lowering of rates and mortgages that were back in the fives again, I don't think we're gonna see that I don't think we're gonna see that anytime in the immediate future.

So you know, the rates where they are, which by the way, the jumped today, today was a bad day for the bond market at least it wasn't a recording this you know, this isn't something that you can control, right. But I think there is a little bit of a silver lining here and the silver lining is, you know, if you're, if you're a buyer right hanging out right now, if you're a first time homebuyer, especially, you really want to buy when the rates are high. And I know this is gonna sound horrifically counterintuitive view, but here's the deal. The rates are something that you can't control, but they're permanent. And when you buy the property, right, I would rather be in a situation where there's a little bit less competition on what I buy, for two reasons a, it means I'm not going to have to ridiculously overpay for the house, right? If I kind of just bid it up like crazy to get it to, it also means that I'm gonna have better selection, right, I'm gonna get closer to sort of my ideal property and my price range.

Because it's not just whatever I could get an offer accepted on right, like you might actually have a little bit of choice. And, and we're actually seeing inventory rise. We'll get into that in the next slide. But you know, the reason why I'm going over this is that interest rate is not forever, right? This will be the most money you will ever be spending to live in that property. So if you can afford it today, you will be delightfully surprised in years to come. You know if there's an opportunity to refinance and have a lower rate on that property, so let's go ahead and try to get my little spotlight error on here. We're gonna oops I don't think that's what I wanted to do. Still learning. So these tools, they switched it around on us on zoom here. I think we're going to need to get rid of that guy.

Okay, now we're back to our little spot. So if you look at our monthly payment, right, that again tells us very similar story, obviously, you know, if the prices went up, then the intro will single family home, you know, that is heading towards a $7,000 month payment. That really means that lenders are looking for you to have a minimum, you know, $13,000 in household income to make that happen. But down here on the condo side of things, things are a little bit better at 4881, that corresponds to a little over $9,000 a month in household income to make that work. Here, we see that here, we got 119 540.

And up here we are, you know, right around that $160,000 level, for entry level single family home kit, this is based on 5% down paying mortgage insurance, all that stuff is included. So this is really kind of a true entry level statistic. Now we're getting to some good news that I think is probably why you tuned in and why you clicked on this, if you're a first time buyer, this absorption rate, right, we've watched this kind of steadily decline over the summer kind of petered out. And you know, we are firmly in the 60s. This does not mean it as a buyer's market. But it is way less competitive than it has been in the last couple of months. This is a gift and we are heading into arguably the low the part of the year that has the least amount of competition, this is really a perfect storm.

And I think buyers that are astute and can take that leap of faith are going to find that, you know, relative to the people who wait until spring of next year, they're gonna be in a better spot, I think in terms of selection of properties in terms of, you know, what, what terms they really have to negotiate, I think they're gonna be in a better spot. We look at our total inventory, right? This is a little bit interesting. Both our entry level single family homes, and our entry level condos inventory is rising in the last two weeks, right. And this is not normally the time of year for that this is normally the time of year holding steady or dropping inventory.

So this is again, this is another sign right, a little bit of good news. Now, it's still way less inventory than we had last year at this point in time. But, you know, I think it's encouraging. And I think you know, if you're a first time buyer on the sidelines, I mean, this has been a rough 36 months for you, I think you've really got to take a hold and look at any of this good news that is actually coming about. Now, if we look at our 14 day still active percentage, that is rising again. So it means a less competitive market. In fact, this number for each of the condos is starting to look a lot like where this number was last year at this time.

And frankly, last year was a great time to have bought a house in October, it didn't seem like it at the time. And right now probably doesn't seem like it either. But I'm telling you, this is a relative point of less competition for you. And then finally, we have our weak supply of homes where this is a relative indication of inventory. And look again, on our condo side of things. We're just over 10 weeks of inventory. That's not that far off from where we were last year, this time. And then we've risen up to seven weeks on our entry level single family homes that still trails last year. But really look at this graph. This is encouraging news, this is more weeks of inventory.

That is better news for buyers, no matter how you look at it. So this is kind of an interesting time of year. I think, you know, there's a there's an old adage that, you know, people never know the good times when they were in them, they can only look back and appreciate them. I think relatively speaking, these interest rates might look scary to you. But this is actually a this is relatively speaking is a good time for you. You know, in the last year, I would say this is probably one of the better times to be in the market right now.

Because I think there is an opportunity to have some selection and actually get some of the things that you might want you might actually be able to have some choice and pick a little bit and I think in the years to come, that's going to be something that you really appreciate. You know, we are a real estate brokerage here in Southern California so if you are a first time homebuyer, you know someone who should be a first time homebuyer and I promise you it was just about everyone knows someone who should be looking into buying a home.

You know, that's what we're here for. We'd love to help you out and be your representatives on that and help you navigate this market and share our expertise with you. Definitely reach out don't forget to like subscribe and hit that notification bell. And yeah, I think that's pretty much it. We'll see you again real soon.