Will US house prices soar or plunge? These 5 experts are divided.
Theron Mohamed
- US home prices have shrugged off the surge in mortgage rates over the past 18 months.
- Homeowners don't want to sell and lose their cheap mortgages, while buyers don't want to overpay.
Where will house prices go from here? Investors, economists, strategists, and real estate insiders are divided on that pressing question.
The Federal Reserve's war on inflation has seen the central bank hike interest rates from nearly zero to over 5% since last spring. The upshot has been mortgage rates doubling to over 7%, sparking an affordability crisis.
Moreover, the housing market is essentially frozen with transactions down sharply. Potential sellers are reluctant to give up their cheap mortgages and take on much pricier ones, while prospective buyers are loath to overpay.
Jeremy Grantham, Barbara Corcoran, David Rosenberg, and other experts have shared drastically different outlooks for home prices. Here's what they said.
1. Jeremy Grantham
Jeremy Grantham sounded the alarm on a "superbubble" spanning stocks, real estate, and commodities at the start of last year.
GMO's cofounder and long-term investment strategist warned in a recent interview that "real estate is a global bubble" and the cost of homes has soared to unsustainable highs in multiple countries.
"House prices will come down ... 30% would be a pretty good guess," he said.
2. Barbara Corcoran
"Shark Tank" star and real-estate tycoon Barbara Corcoran predicts house prices will surge once the Fed cuts rates and mortgages get cheaper.
She's pegged the potential pop at 15% to 20% in interviews, and recently argued the shortage of homes on the market will fuel further price growth.
"No inventory is like an insurance policy," Corcoran said. "If you don't have enough houses to go around, prices continue to go up. There's nothing that's going to make more houses available while interest rates remain high."
3. David Rosenberg
David Rosenberg believes the US economy is barreling toward a recession that will hammer stocks, houses, and other assets.
The Rosenberg Research president and former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch issued a grim forecast for the housing market in a recent interview. He said that ouse prices have only climbed recently because supply has dropped even more sharply than demand has.
"We've created a really sclerotic housing market," he said.
Rosenberg told Insider in February that house prices could plunge by as much as 25% from their peak last year.
4. Glenn Kelman
The US housing market has been hit hard by rising interest rates, but it's unlikely to weaken much further, according to Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman.
"It's been a slow-building disaster," the real estate brokerage's chief said in a recent interview. "The housing market is just taking a beating because affordability is at a four-decade low."
"The only people who are moving are the ones who absolutely have to," Kelman noted. "I wouldn't call that a Goldilocks scenario, I would call that rock bottom. But that's where we are right now, and the only relief is that it can't go much lower."
5. Vincent Deluard
The frozen housing market will ultimately thaw as homeowners can't hold off selling forever. Home prices will drop when it does, Vincent Deluard says.
"Look at the real estate market, no one wants to sell," the director of global macro strategy at StoneX Group said in a recent RealVision interview.
"But eventually, people switch jobs, move cities, get divorced, die," he continued. "That will bring the prices down."
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