The single family median price/sqft got smoked for almost 6% in December, but that is likely due to compositional effects (a change in what’s being sold) as opposed to a “real” change in the market value of housing. (By comparison, condos — usually more volatile — fell by less than 2%). This is just the kind of thing that shows up in a noisy data series like this. I think the takeaway is: whatever the actual change in home values might have been, it was likely to the downside. And of course we’ll have a much better idea with the release of December Case-Shiller index, which measures same-home sales to eliminate the compositional problem. The CS index is estimated in the graph below:
More generally, we continued to see the standoff between very low sales activity (kissing the GFC lows):
…and low inventory:
… resulting in an actually kind of normal months of inventory:
Meanwhile, the decline in mortgage rates provided some relief on the affordability front, but monthly payments are still sky high:
More graphs below, and I plan to update the valuation graphs soon.
February 3, 2023 @ 7:45 AM
Glad to see you are back up and running, especially now that we are in an interesting phase of the market as we head into the spring “selling” season.
P.S. – Love that you kept the retro-vibe with the updates…
February 3, 2023 @ 8:27 AM
Glad you’re back!
February 3, 2023 @ 10:23 AM
Glad you’re back up, Rich! I’ve missed the (mostly) witty banter around here.
February 4, 2023 @ 9:04 AM
Thanks all…
February 5, 2023 @ 9:49 AM
Ill get an update soon on my monitors. Had to create new account because couldnt get the system to send me a password reset on the old one. Also having issues posting from mobile, I log in and try to post and it tells me Im not logged in. Happens over and over. Oh well growing pains. Good to be back
February 5, 2023 @ 10:29 AM
I think the password reset thing is on your end because it’s worked for me (testing multiple accounts) and other people are successfully resetting the passwords on their old accounts as well. If you want to get your old account active again, instead of using this new one, let me know and I will see if there’s something I can do from my end.
Thanks for the heads up about the mobile thing. It sounds like a caching thing, I will try to get that fixed asap. (I don’t control that directly unfortunately, but I will let the hosting company know about it).
February 5, 2023 @ 10:37 AM
Update — I just poked around and realized I can set a pw for you. I have done so and emailed you the new pw (you can change it to something else once you log on).
I can do this for anyone else having password reset troubles, just email at rich@piggington.com (but do check your spam first, I think some of the automated site emails might be getting caught in spam filters).
February 5, 2023 @ 11:05 AM
Update 2, on the caching thing: I am able to reproduce this but will need help from the hosting admin to fix. In the meantime: if you run into that issue, I think it can be fixed by refreshing the browser page.
February 5, 2023 @ 1:39 PM
So I was having issues even logging out so i cleared entire browsing history and that worked. Im back:)
February 5, 2023 @ 5:27 PM
Yes I’ve had issues logging out too… we are trying to figure that one out as well. Welcome back!