One Of The Housing Analysts Who's Nailed Everything Sees A Major Slowdown Ahead
He was on the money about the housing crash and its impact on the economy.
He also accurately called the bottom in housing in 2011.
Now McBride argues that home prices will slow going forward. From McBride:
"It appears house price increases have slowed recently based on agent reports and asking prices (a combination of a little more inventory and higher mortgage rates), but this slowdown in price increases is not showing up yet in the Case-Shiller index because of the reporting lag and because of the three month average (the August report was an average of June, July and August prices). I expect to see smaller year-over-year price increases going forward and some significant deceleration towards the end of the year or in early 2014.
"I also think it is important to look at prices in real terms (inflation adjusted). Case-Shiller, CoreLogic and others report nominal house prices. As an example, if a house price was $200,000 in January 2000, the price would be close to $276,000 today adjusted for inflation."
In real terms, McBride points out that home prices are back to early 2000 levels.
McBride isn't the only one that expects home price growth to slow. Some like Paul Diggle at Capital Economics and Michelle Meyer at Bank of America have also argued for some time that home prices are set to cool this year.