The Real Estate News Brief: Inflation Slowdown, Fed’s Next Steps, What Homebuyers Need to Earn

In this Real Estate News Brief for the week ending November 19th, 2022... the latest inflation slowdown, what the Fed might do next, and what homebuyers need to earn to buy the “typical home.”

Hi, I'm Kathy Fettke and this is Real Estate News for Investors. If you like our podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/real-estate-news-real-estate-investing-podcast/id1079952715

Economic News

We begin with economic news from this past week, and another good report on inflation. The government reported on Tuesday that wholesale prices only rose .2% in October. That lowers the annual rate of inflation from 8.4% to 8%. It had been as high as 11.7% in March. That report along with one the week before on the CPI, show that inflation is slowing down, but officials at the Federal Reserve say they are still seeing the need for several more rate hikes. (1)

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard says that the central bank still has a lot of work to do to attain a “sufficiently restrictive level.” He even suggested that the Federal Funds rate might go as high as 7% to win the fight against inflation. The Fed has already increased the short-term lending rate from near zero to a range of 3.75 to 4%. Economists are projecting a half point rate hike at the next meeting in early December instead of the three-quarter point rate hikes we’ve been seeing. (2)

Fed officials are trying to slow the economy down and are hoping to do that without hurting the job market, but there’s a growing number of tech companies announcing lay-offs. Amazon just announced a plan for 10,000 lay0ffs or about 3% of its workforce. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, also announced workforce cuts of about 11,000 employees. That’s about 13% of its workforce. Tesla founder Elon Musk, who bought Twitter, slashed that workforce in half with about 7,5000 layoffs. Many people are expecting to see higher unemployment numbers. The jobless rate was 3.7% in October. It had surged to 14.7% in April 2020, because of Covid. (3)

Despite the headlines, the number of initial claims for unemployment dropped last week. They fell slightly to a total of 222,000 applications which is considered a low number historically. The number of people who’ve been collecting benefits was up by about 13,000 to 1.5 million. Because layoffs appear to be increasing, economists say we will probably see unemployment numbers rising in the coming weeks and months. (4)

Inflation continues to hit the housing market with prices that many homebuyers can’t afford and another drop in existing home sales. The National Association of Realtors reports a 5.9% drop in October sales to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.45 million units. It’s the ninth month in a row that sales have declined. Compared to a year ago, sales are down 28.4%. It’s currently the lowest sales have been since December of 2011, except for a sharp drop during the pandemic. (5)

Home builder sentiment is sliding further into negative territory. The National Association of Home Builders says its monthly confidence index was down another five points in November, to 33. That’s the lowest it’s been since June of 2012 and is quite a big lower than it was a year ago when the index was at 83. (6)

Mortgage Rates

Mortgage rates tumbled last week after inflation data suggested that price growth may have peaked. Freddie Mac says the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was down 47 basis points to 6.61%. It had risen above the 7% level. The 15-year was also down slightly to 5.98%. (7)

In other news making headlines...

The Paycheck You Need to Buy a Home

Purchasing a “typical home” has gotten so expensive, home buyers need to earn at least six-figures to buy one. A new study by Redfin shows that U.S. buyers need to earn $107,281 a year if they are taking out a loan to buy a median-priced home. That’s about 45.6% more than a buyer needed a year ago, while the average hourly wage has grown only about 5%. (8)

Nationally, the median-price is just under $400,000. Of course, the price of a typical home varies a lot from market to market. San Francisco and San Jose have the highest home prices, but the annual income needed hasn’t grown as much as it has in other markets.

There are several Florida metros at the top of that list. North Port, Florida is first on the list with a 74% increase in the annual income needed to buy a median priced home. The median there is about $488,000. The income a home buyer needed in October of 2021 was about $75,000. In October of this year, that figure shot up to $131,000.

This list can help an investor determine where large numbers of people might need to be renters because they can’t afford to buy a home. You’ll find a link to the report with a complete list of metros in the show notes.

That’s it for today. Please remember to hit the subscribe button, and leave a review!

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Thanks for listening. I'm Kathy Fettke.

Links:

1 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wholesale-prices-rise-slowly-again-in-october-and-point-to-softening-u-s-inflation-11668519485?mod=economy-politics

2 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-bullard-says-interest-rates-will-need-to-rise-further-to-bring-inflation-down-11668691279?mod=economy-politics

3 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-have-not-been-this-worried-about-layoffs-since-april-2020-and-they-also-see-no-immediate-end-to-rising-prices-11668450201

4 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobless-claims-fall-slightly-to-220-000-but-labor-market-softening-11668692678?mod=economy-politics

5 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-existing-home-sales-retreat-for-a-record-ninth-straight-month-in-october-11668783694?mod=bnbh_mwarticle

6 -https://www.marketwatch.com/story/home-builder-sentiment-continues-to-sour-in-november-11668611251?mod=economy-politics

7 -https://www.freddiemac.com/pmms

8 -https://www.redfin.com/news/homebuyer-income-increase-october-2022/