Despite Recession Talk, Houston Home Prices May Advance

As the week ended, anyone who switched on a TV or radio or checked in on one of the financial websites was greeted with a term that hadn’t been seen before: “housing recession.” CNBC.com’s “housing market slides into a recession” was typical, as was MarketWatch’s “America has entered a housing recession, builders and brokers say.” Even Realtor Magazine joined the chorus with “Home Sales Data Points to ‘Housing Recession.’”
For local homeowners whose moods have been greatly buoyed by sizeable gains in Houston home prices, it was hardly a heartening way to enter the weekend. Even for those who won’t list their own properties anytime soon, the banner advances have made welcome additions to their family net worth calculations. But that “housing recession” phrase sounds threatening—even if the only ‘threat’ is that a paper retreat could be in the offing.
Compiling reliable price data for the nation as a whole is a challenging exercise. It’s not hard to imagine why—among other reasons, first reports are often revised considerably, making the decision of which numbers are to be relied upon part art, part science. The statistics-gatherers at CoreLogic.com have honed the national home price data to as fine a point as anyone, but even so, it took until this month to publish the data covering the first half of 2022. Reviewing it now—particularly in the month-by-month totals—does make for interesting reading.
Particularly in light of the weekend headlines, most noteworthy is the CoreLogic statisticians’ projection for the most likely direction home prices will take in the months ahead. For homeowners, sellers, and would-be buyers, it amounts to a well-educated guess on whether a drop in real estate sale prices is likely.
The short answer, according to CoreLogic, is ‘nope.’
A longer answer would include recognition that the near record-breaking pace of home price rises is already nose-diving. Hardly surprising since prices for the past twelve months grew at the breakneck rate of +18.3%. However, the latest advance for June was a much more normal (and sustainable) +0.6%—with the projected rise for the whole of the coming year anticipated as somewhere in the vicinity of +4.3%.
The headline here is probably that both CoreLogic’s HPI and Case-Shiller Indexes are projecting moderating year-over-year price growth. That should go some distance in quieting the most anxiety-producing fears about the possibility of a real estate market crash.
No one can see into the future with 100% certainty, but sober-minded statisticians have a pretty good track record of reasonable projections. CoreLogic also cited a long-term, steady-as-she-goes credibility-fostering fact: their 4.3% number “brings home price growth close to the long run average from 2010 to 2020.” In the meantime, as always, I’ll be closely tracking our local market results. For help with all your Houston real estate needs—call Rinnovare Realty, LLC at (832) 445-4957 or visit us at www.rinnovarerealty.com .