Spring Housing Market 2023

Full Video Transcript Below

Spring Housing 2023 - Is it Changin?

[00:00:00] Hey, real estate fans. Alice Lema, here broker John Scott, beautiful Southern Oregon with another edition of the Weekly podcast. Today we're gonna ask the question, is the market changing what's really going on with our spring housing market of 2023? So we're gonna dive into that and we're gonna do that right now.

So we are selling so many houses right now. It's starting to feel like the high point of summer, and that's a little unusual in southern Oregon in February because usually the spring market starts more March, April. So we're just kind of tracking this, paying attention to it. But I wanna point out a couple of things.

And here we have a graph from KCM, keeping Current Matters, one of my favorite websites, and they dived into a report from realtor.com recently, and we are still 43% lower in housing inventory nationally, then before the pandemic of 2017 and 2019. [00:01:00] 2017. 20 18, 20 19. So there are more homes available than there were, say, last summer, but it's still below what we need.

Well, why is that? In part the builders who are a interest rate sensitive group, for the most part, most of those folks are building houses, doing subdivisions and creating new dwellings with financing. And a lot of that, a lot of those folks just shut down or really slowed down because of the interest rates.

So now, and we were just starting to, to get some, some new construction back into our inventory and then it got pulled back because of the interest rates. So that's one. We just slowed down on how many new homes that are getting built.

Then also, people are jittery still, the world is still a chaotic scary place to a lot of people. And that is affecting their decision to, to sell their [00:02:00] home and move into something else, to downsize, upside, invest, you know, that whole real estate process. So the builders are slowing down because of the interest. And we didn't have enough to start with. The folks that could be selling, maybe not cuz they're a little bit nervous.

And then the third thing I wanted to point out to you today is the foreclosures are a little bit slow behind whatever you wanna call it.

Now I wanna show you this graph here. Because a lot of people keep telling me that there's gonna be a crash. I track the numbers. If there's gonna be a crash, we'll know it, right? We'll know it before it happens cuz we're gonna look every week. But we're way behind in the normal distressed sale category. You, there's a normal amount of homes that go into short sale or foreclosure in a normal market, and we just still don't have that. And I, you can see back in the [00:03:00] heyday before the crash that was 2005, 2006, this graph shows, and then the foreclosures went way up because of the housing crisis.

And then it went way down again. And, and even though it's up a smidge for 2022, it's still behind. So we we're lacking the inventory for our normal short sale and foreclosure market. The builders are slow to get new homes on the market because of the interest rates and we still have some hesitancy from the sellers.

So where does that leave us? Because we still have a huge amount of buyers jumping into the market right now. And we're wondering if we're gonna have another shortage of houses for the rest of our selling season, which in southern Oregon is predominantly in the spring and summer. Here we're sitting mid-February thinking it's a great time to put your house on the market.

There's more houses to choose from, so finding another place if [00:04:00] you're staying here finding another place is easier and more fun. But we could end up being in that situation again this summer where there's not enough houses to sell. And then what if the prices go up because it's supply and demand, folks. Supply and demand, supply and demand. So just wanted to point those items out. That's what's happening in the national market.

Now in our local market. It's, I'm, I'm seeing kind of the same thing. Let's look at the listing inventory in Josephine County. Let's start there, because year over year, that's this time last year to this time, this year, the listing inventory is even, they have a 0% change in Josephine County. So we like to see a a little plus, but in Josephine County, at least for this week, it's 0%, but the prices are up 1% from this time last year.

Jackson County listings year over year are down 5%. The prices in [00:05:00] Jackson County, year over year, up 2%. Well wait till you hear Klamath Falls. Klamath Falls listings year over year are up 14%. Yay. But the prices are up 11%, so. Supply and demand is really having an impact on Southern Oregon.

So, but again, it's February, we're going into the spring season for our housing market. So it's gonna be really fun and interesting every week to track this. But nationally we're still down over 40% in our housing inventory. Locally we could definitely use more.

So, here's what I wanna leave you with. Call me this weekend. If you're thinking of selling and wanna get your house on the market. There's still plenty of time to do that, and there's still a high demand. We still have a lot of buyers out there. My number is 541-301-7980. Let's talk about what we can do for you as a seller, as a listing. If you're buying, it's a great time to buy. The interest rates are down. There's more homes to choose from [00:06:00] than there were. Even though it's not enough, there's still more. And we have people making great deals. Right now. The prices are down just a little bit.

I know that tracking them year over year, they're up, but they came down from their highs of the summer. Tracking those numbers in the summer will be different. But we've got people making some great deals, they're getting some great houses. It's really fun right now. The world is not fun, but our housing market in southern Oregon right now is positive. People are moving, they're getting on with their life and that makes everybody happy.

So again, reach out to me for the weekend. Otherwise, hug those you love, and we'll talk to you again next week. Bye now.