The Expert Podcast

Interest rates are up, home prices are up, so a lot of wisdom says don't buy a house now. But there are some factors that might indicate that the single-family home primary residence window of opportunity might be now again. There's arguments on both sides, but hear me out.

The fact that rates have stabilized a little bit and that the market has started to catch its breath after this large run-up in price, and the fact there's not a huge crash—look, the price increase happened from 2020 to 2021, beginning at 2022. It's been almost a year since this house spike has happened. There really is no crash. Yeah, there's some reductions and some discounting, but people aren't running for the exits desperate to get out of their homes. Maybe that'll happen in the future, but it's not happening immediately. And there's really no indication that there's a lot of defaults on existing mortgages because most mortgages, even though the rates are high now and even though the prices are high now, most purchases and mortgage acquisitions happened a year ago plus.

A lot of experts are saying this might be the time to buy a house because there's some inventory in the market, the prices have stabilized, and there's a psychology of fear that people don't want to buy a house. They're holding back because they see the prices are too high. Once people get over that fear and realize, "Well, look, I need to buy a house, even if my mortgage payment is going to be $3,500 or $4,000," I need to get something. And those people start coming back into the market and the inventory starts to get absorbed.

It might get worse in the future, and there's still a question of whether or not the rates are going to go up again. So look, consider both sides. It's not for sure the prices are going to go up, it's not for sure they're going to go down, but consider the other side of what your instinct is so you're not blind to an alternative that maybe is only visible in hindsight.