Marin Real Estate

The number crunching never ends. A number of different groups have recently put out their own internal analyses of where they feel home prices are headed by the end of 2013. Although the results are varied, they are all agreed on one thing: home prices will rise. Question is: how much? Here’s the list. You can reference them and decide for yourself whether these are industry flunkies of people trying to get an unbiased fix on the market:

• Demand Institute Study: 1.75% appreciation
• Urban Land Institute: 2%
• Home Price Expectation Survey: 2.44%
• National Assoc of Business Economists: 2.8%
• Wall Street Journal’s Survey of Economists: 3.25%

And while all of these groups are predicting prices to rise, none are predicting they will approach the record appreciation we saw in housing prior to the bubble bursting.

Now shift your focus and take a look at mortgage rates. For the industry, the prediction for mortgage rate increase is a recurring embarrassment, the classic Boy Who Cried Wolf scenario. It’s been predicted for so many years I’ve frankly lost count. Well, they are still projected to rise through the end of 2013, and these are the averages posted by the Mortgage Bankers Association:

Q4 2012: 3.8%

Q1 2012: 3.9%

Q4 2013: 4.4%

I’ll follow up shortly with how that might impact you as a Buyer. And if you have a general market questions that eed answering, email me at egutekunst@fhallen.com or call me directly at 415.939.2308.