End of year 2023 sales statistics showed that the average sales price of Lansing area homes increased 4.6% from $229,554 at the close of 2022 to $240,208. This represents an average home value improvement of $10,654.

Fourth Quarter 2023 Sales Statistics

The fact that there were 979 fewer sales in 2023 (-14.8%) represents a lower number of homes being offered for sale…established homeowners are reluctance to give up a 3.5% mortgage in order to enter into a now 6.9% mortgage on a different home.

Buyer enthusiasm has been strong, especially for those who have recently sold a home and/or are moving into the Lansing area. First time home buyers have been hit hard with the increased interest rates that require budgeting changes and higher down payments. Local lenders and the State of Michigan’s MSHDA program have offered relief with mortgage incentives that accommodate lower income buyers.

Just about any properly priced home has been receiving multiple offers within a few days.
Price reductions occurring only with overpriced homes.

Snapshot of the Lansing area sales entering into the Spring selling season:
Lansing Area Market View – March 1, 2024
 428 – currently listed homes for sale in the five county greater Lansing area.
 234 – homes with accepted offers. (Awaiting inspections and/or appraisal.)
 283 – homes listed as Pending. (Have completed inspections and will soon close.)
 556 – homes that have closed since January 1, 2024. 

Current Mortgage interest rates 
  30-year fixed – 6.9% ($659 per $1000)
  15-year fixed – 6.29% ($860 per $1000)

Home sellers currently receive historically high prices for their homes…yet fewer home sellers are putting their properties on the market…despite the temptation to cash in. The reason is, that mortgage interest rates are more than double what they were just prior to July 2022.
Home owners with low interest rate mortgages are unwilling to give them up! 

Many are only selling their home if they can pay cash for their next home, downsize to something smaller with less upkeep, or move to a new city and state where a similar home is less expensive than the one they’re selling. 

Residential Real Estate Values Depend on Sales
The number of available homes for sale (currently 447) is constantly growing or shrinking with market trends dependent on the sales prices of closed listings, time on market, price increases and/or reductions. It’s no secret that inflation, interest rates, uncertain economic conditions, weather, and even politics are having an affect on the 2024 real estate market.

Home Listings are Vital
However, 5608 Lansing area homes closed in 2023 with mortgage rates as high as 8%. The 447 currently listed homes represent a residential housing inventory that will be ‘sold out’ in five weeks!

In the new year, homebuyers and sellers are still facing the same challenges as they did in 2023—high interest rates, sky-high home prices, and an inadequate supply of homes. As affordability issues slow housing sales volume, low supplies are keeping home prices high.

Mortgage interest rates reached 8.01% in October, the highest level since 2000, but since then rates have come down. Bankrate.com experts say there’s no likelihood of a housing market turndown as long as lending standards remain strict, and there aren’t enough homes to meet demand. 

Banks are tightening their lending standards due to increases in credit card and car loan delinquencies, according to Freddie Mac. This is also impacting mortgage applications, credit lines and refinance activity – loan originations were down approximately 30% in October 2023 from the previous year.  The good news is that mortgage delinquencies are low compared to other loan types.  Inflation is waning, but still remains above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. Consumer spending will decelerate due to slower economic and weaker employment growth which will cause rates to come down in 2024. Continuing homebuyer demand will keep home prices elevating 2.6% in 2024, but with rates dipping as low as 6%, housing will be a little more affordable.

The Federal Reserve’s aggressive handling of inflation by raising overnight borrowing rates to banks has had a positive effect, and further rate hikes appear unlikely as the numbers get closer to the Fed’s target of 2% inflation.

Meanwhile, help is out there for those being squeezed out of the market. FHA-guaranteed loans require as little as 3.5% down. Numerous state and local governments have increased programs for first-time and lower-income homebuyers. Many lenders offer grants, down payment assistance programs, and mortgages with no closing costs. The National Association of REALTORS® offers the Housing Opportunity Program, with resources for homebuyers.

While many potential homebuyers have been knocked out of the market by higher mortgage interest rates and home prices, there’s hope on the horizon that they’ll have better luck in 2024.

Will home prices go up or down? Will mortgage interest rates rise or fall? Will there be a recession? Will there be enough homes to buy? While the housing market adjusts to market realities, the questions remain the same.

Macro and micro economics drive homebuying, such as inflation, borrowing costs, supply and demand, housing availability and local jobs, which is why housing markets are highly individual. Nationally aggregated statistics on housing sales such as home prices and mortgage interest rates only indicate trends, and even those may or may not apply to your local market conditions.  So, what do the trends indicate?

Inflation and the Federal Reserve

Inflation appears to be ticking upward again, prompting the Federal Reserve to announce that borrowing rates to banks will continue to rise. Banks respond by raising their borrowing rates to consumers and businesses, resulting in higher mortgage interest rates as well as rates for credit cards and other loans. To reach the Fed’s target rate of two percent inflation, several things need to happen, for consumers to spend less, housing prices to decline and unemployment to increase. Rates are currently the highest they’ve been in over 20 years.

Borrowing rates vary according to two things: Federal Reserve overnight borrowing rates to banks based on local market conditions and the risk of foreclosures in a given area. If inflation continues to rise, the Fed has suggested it may hike rates again in September.

Mortgage interest rates

Over 40% of U.S. mortgages originated in 2020 and 2021, when mortgage rates were at record lows, which explains why homeowners are reluctant to sell their homes and take out new loans at twice the interest rate – over 7%.

To illustrate the difference, a home costing $450,000 with 20% down and at 3% in 2021 cost about $1,518 per month in principal and interest alone.  In 2023, the same home with 20% down and at 6.8% would cost you $2,347 per month – an increase of $829 in just two years.  If you carry the loan to its term – 30 years – you’ll pay a total of $546K at 3% including principal and interest, and $844K at 6.8%.

What many consumers may not realize is that published rates on mortgage rates are idealized as if the borrower has the best credit scores, a 20% down payment, and a solid work history. In reality, mortgage interest rates depend on many factors including debt-to-income ratio, the home you’re buying, your local market conditions, the terms of your loan, your lender’s underwriting practices, and more.

Supply and demand

The continuing shortage of homes for sale has multiple causes, but the most obvious reason is that the country is not building enough houses for the number of households that are forming. Between 2012 and 2022, 15.6 million households were formed, but only 8.5 million single-family homes and 3.4 million multi-family homes were completed. The gap between single-family housing starts and household formations grew from 5.5 million in 2021 to 6.5 million in 2022.

Housing is still suffering a hangover from the 2008 housing crisis, as it took years for home prices to recover from devastating 30% losses. In the meanwhile, lenders tightened lending practices to comply with stricter consumer qualification rules from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored entities tasked with buying mortgage packages from banks and putting them into securities. This replenishes money to the banks so they can lend to homebuyers.

Homebuilders are still recovering. Not only were commercial loans harder to get, but consumers weren’t buying homes while prices were falling in the decade following the housing recession. Subsequently, builders put their money toward multi-family apartment complexes or in luxury homes, leaving a serious shortage of affordable entry-level and workforce single-family homes.

During the pandemic, many workers worked from home and found they wanted a different lifestyle. They flocked from urban centers to suburbia and to small towns to find larger, more comfortable homes. Those who purchased homes at record low interest rates are finding three to four years later that their homes are worth much more money, but they’re reluctant to buy another home at today’s higher prices, coupled with interest rates that more than doubled since 2021.

From July 2021 to July 2022, there were 6.4% fewer homes listed on the market as homeowners declined to list their homes for sale. Coupled with builders pulling back on housing starts in 2023 by nearly 20%, homebuyers may face tighter inventories of homes for sale. Realtor.com anticipates that lack of inventory, plus higher mortgage rates and still-high home prices will cause the number of homes for sale to drop 5% and that housing sales will fall 15.8% to about 4.2 million homes sold this year. If that happens, it will be the lowest number of homes sold since 2012. 

For more than seven years, the Lansing real estate market has been defined by a limited supply of available homes, mortgage rates below 4%, and homes sales exceeding the asking price by thousands. In April of 2022, sellers routinely received competitive offers within a few days of market exposure. In June, mortgage rates suddenly doubled to 7.3% leaving many buyers to reconsider the purchase of a home.

The 2023 Spring homebuying season is beginning in the shadow of continuing inflation and high home prices which may be giving both buyers and sellers reason to pause. However, despite changing market conditions, it’s still a seller’s market…and mortgage rate is the only change!

• The number of buyers continues to exceed the available home for sale.
• Mortgage money is easy to obtain.
• Given the comparative cost of renting, consumers are feeling better about the housing market.
• Sellers may not receive offers exceeding the home’s fair market value.

Home sales statistics for this first quarter of 2023 are consistent with previous years in the Lansing area market. Of course, things may change, but rents have been steadily increasing, making it economically cheaper to buy than to rent.

Lansing Area Market View – April 1, 2023
  405 – currently listed homes for sale in the five county greater Lansing area.
  219 – homes with accepted offers. (Awaiting inspections and/or appraisal.)
  280 – homes listed as Pending. (Have completed inspections and will soon close.)
  1094 – homes that have closed since January 1, 2023.
  6339 – homes that have closed in the past 12 months.

Current Mortgage interest rates
  30-year fixed – 6.42% ($6.27 per $1000)
  15-year fixed – 5.68% ($8.27 per $1000)

What will the new year bring for homebuyers, homeowners and home sellers? Lower or higher home prices? Higher or lower mortgage interest rates? Or a continuation of the overheated pandemic-inspired housing market?

There’s no question that the blistering housing market of the past three years was hard on homebuyers. By October 2022, the average mortgage interest rate for a 30-year fixed is 7.24%, more than double the 3.22% level in January 2022.

According to Fannie Mae, the combination of high inflation, monetary policy tightening, and a slowing housing market is “likely to tip the economy into a modest recession in the first quarter of 2023.” However, the housing market is typically slow during the first quarter in Michigan due to cold weather.

Many economic forecasters believe housing prices will decline, but that homebuyers shouldn’t fear buying during a declining market. Morgan Stanley predicts a 7% dip in home prices for 2023 that would only return housing prices to where they were in January 2022 – 32% higher than prices were in March 2020 when the pandemic began. Economists with Goldman Sachs and Moody Analytics are predicting 5% to 10% declines in home prices, based on lack of homebuyer affordability, slowing housing sales, fewer mortgage applications and a looming recession, however mild.

BusinessInsider.com reports that the Federal Reserve’s overnight rate hikes have raised mortgage interest rates, pushing affordability to new lows, but that a recession could bring interest rates down again. That combined with softer homebuying demand due to inflation and sellers lowering their prices would make spring and summer 2023 great times to buy a home.