With homeownership you can lock in the cost today, and have an asset that increases in value over time, making it a great hedge against inflation.
When looking at home price appreciation versus consumer price increases gong back to the 1970s, we can see how home price appreciation outpaces inflation. Of course, the 2000s was a fundamentally different housing market with an oversupply of homes and lower lending standards. Overall, we can see that buying a home today would not only lock in today’s costs and provide a hedge against inflation, but avoid the rising rental rates.
Rental prices are skyrocketing, and the forecasts project that not only will home values will continue rising, but so will mortgage rates.
Rent increases have been greater than inflation in most years. That means it’s more expensive to rent over time.
For a $200,000 home at 3.5% interest rate today your monthly payment would be $898. However, in Q1 of 2023 when that same home will be $212,600, interest rates will be $3.8%, and now your monthly payment is $990. That’s a difference of $33,314 over the life of the 30-year mortgage. That amount jumps to $66,625 for a $400,000 home.
For a $200,000 home at 3.5% interest rate today your monthly payment would be $898. However, in Q1 of 2023 when that same home will be $212,600, interest rates will be $3.8%, and now your monthly payment is $990. That’s a difference of $33,314 over the life of the 30-year mortgage. That amount jumps to $66,625 for a $400,000 home.
For a $200,000 home at 3.5% interest rate today your monthly payment would be $898. However, in Q1 of 2023 when that same home will be $212,600, interest rates will be $3.8%, and now your monthly payment is $990. That’s a difference of $33,314 over the life of the 30-year mortgage. That amount jumps to $66,625 for a $400,000 home. That’s staggering.
Tangible assets like real estate get more valuable over time making buying a home a good way to spend your money during inflationary times.
This is the Home Price Expectation Survey of 100 economists and data analysts from Q4 of 2021, and represents their house appreciation forecasts by 2026. The group was divided into optimists and pessimists, where optimists projecting the most appreciation over the next 5 years, and the pessimists estimate on the lower end. The pessimists are saying that by 2026 houses will appreciate in value by over 23%. That is pretty significant.
We’ve recently seen a rise in mortgage rates. Some of the last reported numbers have us around 3.55%, which is certainly higher than in some past years, but the housing market is expected to remain pretty competitive this year. It’s about to start feeling like interest rates are going to be high, but they are historically low for the U.S.
Let’s look at two of the mortgage markets – the purchase market and the refinance market. The purchase market is forecasted to grow, and the refinance market is forecasted to constrict – a typical reaction in a rising rate environment.
Let’s tie in the 10-year treasury for a moment. In the last 2 months, the rate on the 10-year treasury yield has skyrocketed. Why is that important?
For the last 50 years, the relationship between the mortgage rate and the 10-year treasury yield has been almost symbiotic. Wherever the 10-year treasury yield goes, there goes the 30-year fixed rate. The Fed does not control interest rates – it can only hope to influence them. Overall, the 10-year treasury yield may be something worth watching.
Month after month we have talked about why we will not see a wave of foreclosures coming to the market, so let’s wrap up this month looking at the latest data.
Loans in forbearance have fallen below one million. This is huge. We are at roughly 780,000 loans in forbearance which equates to 1.4% of mortgages. It is wonderful to see that the forbearance program has really helped homeowners change their situations during such a time of economic uncertainty.
Looking at loans upon exiting the forbearance program, about 38% percent of homeowners are paid in full by either making monthly payments or paying off their loan. Then, about 44% percent are on some sort of repayment plan – homeowners who have been able to make a loan modification or deferral. Unfortunately, 18.2% of homeowners are exiting the forbearance plan without a loss mitigation plan. The bright side of that is, according to Black Knight, 93% of homeowners in a forbearance plan have at least 10% equity, allowing them the opportunity to sell their home. To put this all in perspective, during the housing bubble burst in 2008, we saw 9.3 million homes go into foreclosure. We are in a very different situation today.
We have significantly fewer foreclosures today than we would even in a normal year. Obviously, the forbearance program came allowed us to see record low foreclosures in the most recent years.
Foreclosure activity is at an all-time low. We are at 151,000 foreclosures, whereas in 2007 to 2015, millions of homeowners were going into the foreclosure process. Even if this number of 151,000 doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled, we would be nowhere near where we were when the housing bubble burst.