Some home buyers find deals in shifting market Los Angeles Times

Table Of Content

• Does California have enough water for lots of new homes? Yes, experts say, despite drought
• Housing Market Tracker
• Be the first to see the latest real estate news:
• Scripps researchers are laser-focused on forecasting bluff failure along California's coast
• Supreme Court divided on homelessness case that will affect California encampment policy
• More From the Los Angeles Times

Experts say the only thing that will bring about a sustained change is an increase in the number of homes for sale, and Redfin says that's starting to happen in some markets. New listings are up, and the decline in older listings is slowing down. "Although these lower rates remain a welcome relief, it is clear they will have to further drop to more consistently reinvigorate demand," it said.

Does California have enough water for lots of new homes? Yes, experts say, despite drought

"Additional housing supply is helping to satisfy market demand," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, in the report. The most recent National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), which tracks builder sentiment, saw a fourth consecutive monthly rise, surpassing a crucial threshold with an increase from 48 to 51 in March. A reading of 50 or above means more builders see good conditions ahead for new construction.

Housing Market Tracker

That’s finally starting to change, experts say — even though rates are now much higher, climbing again past 7% in recent weeks. Here are some expert tips to increase your chances for an optimal outcome in this tight housing market. For one, the data uncovered that expenses are eating up more than 32% of the average national wage. Common lending guidelines require monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and homeowners insurance to comprise 28% or less of your gross income. Sturtevant notes that declining new home prices are coming amid a recent trend of builders introducing smaller and more affordable homes to the market. The settlement requires NAR to enact new rules, including prohibiting offers of broker compensation on multiple listing services (MLS), the private databases that allow local real estate brokers to publish and share information about residential property listings.

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“Potential buyers remain quite sensitive,” Joel Kan, an economist with the Mortgage Bankers Assn., said in a news release announcing the data. Such continued affordability challenges are a major reason some experts predict Southern California home prices have further to fall. But with nearby houses typically listed above $1.5 million, the dream is out of reach. By then, prices ideally will have fallen enough so they can stretch their budget to buy. Tressa Pope, founder of TPG Mortgage Lending in Burbank, said people using down payment assistance programs have also had luck. When competition was fierce, sellers often refused to consider those buyers, because they feared paperwork would bog down the deals.

Scripps researchers are laser-focused on forecasting bluff failure along California's coast

In this situation, agents would likely only show buyers homes where sellers are offering compensation. Moreover, sellers will no longer be required to pay buyer broker commissions and real estate agents participating in the MLS must establish written representation agreements with their buyer clients. There was a time, he said, when the main thing they locked up was Sudafed. Eventually, items such as Plan B and razors got added and then, a couple years ago, he noticed more people swiping Tide Pods.

Weekly housing inventory data — both active inventory and new listings  — are prone to one-week moves that deviate from a trend, especially if people are going Easter egg hunting. So, the fact that active inventory and new listings data fell last week isn’t a big deal. Although I expect some of the weekly data to rebound next week as a result, growth in active and new listings is still trending slower than I thought would happen in 2024.

Finding affordable housing for both renters and buyers is feeling impossible lately. Experts point to a shortage of an estimated four to seven million homes. We’ve now had back-to-back weeks of healthy housing inventory growth, making spring 2024 much healthier than spring 2023. If they buy now and prices keep falling, they might not have enough equity to sell and could be vulnerable to a foreclosure if they lose their jobs.

Fox arrives at the start of the industry’s annual “upfront” market with the 2025 Super Bowl broadcast and football great Tom Brady among its offerings. Laurence Darmiento covers wealth and dealmakers in Southern California for the Los Angeles Times. He joined the paper in 2015 as an assistant business editor and has overseen finance, real estate and Washington business coverage. Darmiento previously had been the managing editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal and was a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News and other outlets. Although the draft regulations call for doing so, several speakers complained that such mitigation efforts had not been reflected in recent premium increases. The two-bed, two-bath home sits on a quarter-acre lot, and Putman boasted the gardens and terraces as a draw for potential buyers.

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For the week ending April 25, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate stood at 7.17%, according to Freddie Mac. The more liberal 9th Circuit, Newsom said, had “tied the hands of state and local governments” by issuing vague rulings that invited litigation from homeless people and their advocates every time California jurisdictions tried to address the problem. You may be wondering How much over the asking price should I offer on a home in Los Angeles in 2021? It has been reported that more than 42% of homes in Los Angeles have been selling for over the asking price.

If a home you’re trying to sell is languishing but you can’t reduce the asking price, McBride recommends dangling other concessions. “Offering a temporary mortgage rate buy-down for the seller could be the type of incentive that gets a deal,” he said. That could benefit those who are still browsing and saving up for a first home, he said. “If you get that promotion, you pay off your student loan debt, you really build up your savings, you’re going to be in a position where home prices may not be much different two years from now than they are today.

Redfin is a full-service real estate brokerage that uses modern technology to make clients smarter and faster. For more information about working with a Redfin real estate agent to buy or sell a home, visit our Why Redfin page. Prospective homebuyers are facing competition from buyers who can afford to buy a home in cash.

Value has gone up and down, but if you own your home long enough, historically, it has been hard to lose money on California real estate. Set a maximum housing budget that you can afford, which should be less than the maximum mortgage you qualify for. (The only exception here is the self-employed who may have to be a bit more creative to get a large mortgage). Try to avoid getting sucked into a bidding war where you end up spending way more than the house is worth, or worse, spending more than you can really afford. “The reality is that about 70% of sellers are also buyers, so sellers are sensitive in this environment as well,” Zillow’s chief economist, Skylar Olsen, told CNBC toward the end of last week.

High interest rates and inflated home values have made purchasing a home challenging for first-time homebuyers. As a Los Angeles financial planner, who has grown up in Southern California, I have seen the real estate market boom and bust over the years. I am also fortunate enough to see the long-term trend of real estate prices going up, up, and up over time. Most of the homebuying discussed here could apply to any housing market that may or may not be coming up on a crash. For the last few years, limited housing inventory and low rates have put the housing market on ice.

Housing stock remains near historic lows—especially entry-level supply—which has propped up demand and sustained ultra-high home prices. Gibbs and Gorkowski are among the many agents especially concerned about first-time home buyers. After July, first-time and VA buyers will be required to sign a buyer-broker agreement stating that they will compensate their broker—but Gibbs says many won’t have the means to do so. Department of Veterans Affairs to revise its policies prohibiting VA buyers from paying broker commissions. Even so, there’s skepticism that the federal government will be able to implement changes in time for the July deadline.

Texas and Florida, “are areas where people aren’t as locked in … a larger share of the population are free and clear on their mortgage. They’re older boomers; they moved down there with equity growth over the past 15 years,” Olsen said. Real estate is cyclical, and typically when mortgage rates shoot up, sales decline, and home prices fall; and eventually because home prices tumble, sales return. Housing inventory finally hit my target level of growth last week with mortgage rates now over 7.25%, something I couldn’t get all last year. Of course, what is different this year versus last year is that new listing data is growing yearly instead of trending at the lowest levels recorded in history.

Even in light of the recent surge in L.A., the rate of reported shoplifting incidents in L.A. County in late 2022 was slightly lower than it had been 2014, according to a report from the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzed state Department of Justice statistics. During that eight-year period, only three of the state’s 15 most populous counties — all in the San Francisco Bay Area — saw increased rates of shoplifting, a misdemeanor crime defined as stealing goods valued at less than $950. The 9th Circuit has already allowed for reasonable restrictions on when, where and how homeless people can sleep or build protective structures, the critics said. And San Francisco already have such policies in place — and actively enforce them.