Key insights
- The housing market shows signs of improvement with pending home sales up 4.6% year-over-year in March, despite rising mortgage rates. Inventory is also up about 4%. Coastal markets still favor sellers, while southeastern markets are more buyer-friendly. The impact on US equities is slightly positive, suggesting a potential boost to related sectors like homebuilders and mortgage lenders, but the overall effect is tempered by ongoing rate concerns.
Spring homebuying season is showing signs of improvement, with homes under contract rising 4.6% year over year in March, according to Zillow.
Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Claire Boston chats with Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre to go over the details.
Early signs point to home buyers jumping back in this spring season, and Yahoo Finance's Claire Boston joins us here with the latest.
So, Claire, it seems like we're seeing some positive signs in the market. Should we get excited?
I I I don't think we should get excited just yet, but definitely things are looking up a little bit. And I'm quite interested in this just because mortgage rates have risen every week for the past five weeks.
And so I think there was some concern that that was going to keep buyers on the sidelines and maybe sellers on the sidelines too, and we'd be in this kind of flop era again.
But things are really picking up. Um, Zillow had some new data out, showing that pending home sales, so these are homes that went under contract, were up 4.6 in March compared to a year ago.
We've also got inventory quite a bit higher. It's up about 4%. So that is showing some real movement in this market. And generally that it seems like people are not super worried about mortgage rates right now at this current like 6.4% level,
even though we're way off 6% which was very exciting.
Yeah, as you noticed that the chart was kind of inflecting to the right there. So when we think about real estate, you got buyer's markets, you got seller's markets, geographically, how is this picture painted?
Yeah, it definitely, your experience in the housing market is going to depend so much on where you live. And if you are someone on the coast, like we are in New York, uh it is still definitely very much tilted towards sellers.
And on the flip side, those southeastern markets, places like Texas, they are more buyer friendly. So it really depends where you are in terms of what you're experiencing in this market. That being said, deals are getting done pretty much everywhere.
Yeah. So, let's think about the cost of owning a home. We were just talking about mortgage rates ticking up but not really scaring away the buyers. So, what about affordability? How's that looking?
Yeah, and so affordability is a little bit better than last year because mortgage rates last year were 6.7%.
So the comps, the comparisons are looking good?
So the comps are a little bit better. On average, Zillow found that the total housing payment someone who's getting a mortgage now is roughly like $1,800 a month, again average. Uh, that's down about 4% from a year ago.
So, you know, people do have more buying power now and that may be another reason that they're coming back into this market.
All right, some incrementally positive news. We'll call it that. Claire, thank you so much.
Thank you.