When will we have more homes in the market? Looking at Albuquerque’s Real estate market data

(Transcript Snippet): “Tego:

So I did a little, uh, analysis here, Tracy. And, um,

Tracy:

When will we have more homes on the market to go? I know you were working on that analysis

Tego:

As I, I looked at a lot of different data. And so if, you know, if you’re not familiar with the pin going on in the Albuquerque real estate market, and by the way, this is Tico and Tracy Venturi with the Venturi Realty group of Keller Williams Realty in Albuquerque. And if people want to reach us trace,

Tracy:

Uh, best is just call us 448-8888 Of course, that’s in the (505) 448-8888 or welcomehomeabq.com.

Tego:

That’s great. Thank you. So, uh, you know, the, the, the real story of our market is just the limited number of homes on the market now, and that’s not just our market. I’m sorry. That’s, that’s nationally. That’s, that’s, I’m not going to say everywhere, but you know, most markets healthy, real estate markets have a, a much lower number of homes on the market than what would be considered healthy. And, and what’s what’s happened is that driven prices up substantially, you know, double digit, uh, home price growth in the last couple of years, each year. And so, you know, the question is, okay, what’s going to happen. That’s going to bring more homes on the market to hopefully maybe stabilize prices a little bit, give more opportunity, more options for buyers. And, uh, you know, if, if you’ve heard you probably, you may have been, if you follow the housing market at all, you’ve probably heard the narrative that we’re going to have foreclosures, and we’re going to have homes that were in this forbearance program that are going to come flooding on the market.

Tego:

Well, I, I’m here to tell you and I, and I’m very confident in this. That is not going to happen. There’s maybe some, but it’s not going to be a flood. One of the reasons for that is we, we know, as of today, we’re here in November of 2021. Most of the programs where people were in this for forbearance programs, uh, expired in October now that, you know, September, October, October was when a lot of them were coming up. And if there were a lot of people that were in a, in a situation where they couldn’t, you know, pick up and start making their mortgage payment again, that’s how you come out of the forbearance plan. Um, we would have seen, you know, a bunch of homes coming on the market. We haven’t seen it locally, and we haven’t seen it national

Tracy:

What’s really gone on with homes on the market. Well,

Tego:

Give me the context or what do you know, h

Tracy:

So how many houses do we have on the market compared to last month or six months ago? Okay.

Tego:

Yeah. Thank you. To put it in perspective. So we’re down about 30% over last year, which was down from the year before, which is down, but for the board the year before, let me put it this way right now, November of 21, we’re somewhere around 950 homes in the Metro Albuquerque area, which, you know, that’s residential properties, a healthy market when they say, you know, and they talk about a balanced market or a buyer’s market, or seller’s market, a healthy market, based on the current demand we have is 4,000 homes, 5,000 homes. We’re at 950, right? Yeah. So, so it’s, there’s, you know, a lot of things going on out there, interest rates has started to come up a little bit that might actually slow things down. Maybe, maybe not. Um, but, but the one trend in the data that I was trying to get to here the long way was when are we going to have more homes coming on the market?

Tego:

And if we look at the seasonal trends from now through probably the end of February, um, we’re going to continue, continue to have less and less homes in the market every week. Um, that, that holds true. I went back to 2013 and, and I’m sure it goes back further than that. I just didn’t need to go back any further is every year from about this point until the end of February, the following year, we see about 20% less homes on the market. Now, 2020 was an exception to that. But a 2020 is an exception to just about everything. Yeah, yeah. Which, which means from our 950, we have now, I mean, we could be down to 700 homes on the market.

Tracy:

That would be really tough

Tego:

It would be, and it’s, it’s unfortunate because there’s people that want to buy. We know that there’s thousands of people in our market that have, um, pre-approvals, you know, to, to purchase a home mortgage applications. We know that mortgage applications have been very strong. We’ve got that data. So, uh, I don’t know. I, I, you know, it’s just, I don’t know what to make of it other than it’s it’s not great.

Tracy:

Yeah. That’s tough. So when will we see more homes on the market? Probably March, March, probably April, definitely April, may, June, because that seasonally is when we see them, but will we see 4,005,000 homes on the market? No, we’re just going to slowly inch up for our busy season next spring. Um, which means if you’re thinking of selling might be a really good time. Yeah,

Tego:

Yeah, no, I, I mean, it’s, it’s a, it’s a challenge and I know I’m kind of tongue tied here because I’m not sure what the make of it, you know, there’s housing economists and economists out there that would like to see 4% interest rate just to suppress the market just to slow down the real estate market and, and that’s, um, possible, but not likely that we’re going to see 4% interest rates anytime soon,

Tracy:

Even if it’s 4, Tego. I mean, it can’t slow. It that much right for is still phenomenally great interest rates. And we were talking quarter percent, 8% here and there, and yes, it makes a difference. But

Tego:

Let me give you this thought experiment. Okay. If you have a home and you’ve locked in a 30 year mortgage at 3% interest rate and a year or two from now mortgage rates at, for four and a half percent, how motivated are you going to be to sell your home?

Tracy:

I think people still, you know, if they need to sell and they want to sell. Okay.

Tego:

Yeah. That’s fair. No, I’ll, I’ll accept that. I’m just, I’m just wondering with these ultra low mortgage rates that people are now locked into, um, if that’s going to be a deterrent for people putting their homes on the market in, in the future,

Tracy:

It could be. And probably Eddie would know that the lot of times what we’re seeing now is when people are buying their dream home or they’re moving up or they’re changing homes, they’re keeping their current home as a rental. So they’ve got a house that’s, you know, a great rental and you’re at a 3% mortgage might just make sense to keep that house. When you buy your other house,

Tego:

You just hit on another thing that’s that is also affecting the, the lack of supply of homes in, in the country is a lot of people are doing that. A lot of people own a second home rental home investment property, way more than, than, uh, any time in the past, right. That’s keeping homes off the market, or at least for the, for sale market. Yeah.

Tracy:

We’ve had plenty of, uh, home sellers that have chosen to keep their home and buy a new home as their primary residence.

Tego:

For sure.