Source: Yahoo! Sports —
On Jan. 10, researchers at Goldman Sachs downgraded their outlook for the U.S. housing market in a paper titled “Getting worse before getting better.” Instead of U.S. home prices falling 4.1% in 2023, which was their November call, researchers at the investment bank said national home prices would drop 6.1% this year.
Fast-forward to Monday, and Goldman Sachs has already tossed out that forecast. In a paper bluntly titled “2023 Housing Outlook: Finding a Trough,” Goldman Sachs researchers argued the prospects for the U.S. housing market are improving and that national home prices would fall just 2.6% in 2023.
“Home sales appear set to turn higher. Mortgage purchase applications have averaged 9% above their October trough so far in January and survey-based measures of purchasing intentions have rebounded sharply,” wrote Goldman Sachs researchers in their latest report.
By the time national home prices bottom, Goldman Sachs expects prices to be 6% below their June 2022 peak. That’s also a sharp revision from its previous prediction of a 10% peak-to-trough decline.
This upward revision by Goldman Sachs, coupled with improved mortgage purchase application figures for January, is why Fortune once again tracked down the latest housing forecasts from 29 of the nation’s leading housing researchers. Among those forecasters, five expect U.S. home prices to grow or remain flat in 2023, while the other 24 believe U.S. home prices have further to fall. (Here’s the prior round-up).
Let’s take a closer look at the predictions.
Realtor.com: The economics team at Realtor.com predicts that the median price of existing homes will rise 5.4% in 2023 while mortgage rates average 7.4%.
Home.LLC: The firm predicts U.S. home prices will rise 4% in 2023.
CoreLogic: The real-estate data firm predicts that U.S. home prices will rise 2.8% between November 2022 and November 2023. (Here is CoreLogic’s latest risk assessment for the nation’s 392 largest regional housing markets.)
NAR: The trade group projects that existing home prices are poised to rise 1.2% in 2023 while mortgage rates will average 6.3%.
Freddie Mac: The firm’s forecast model has U.S. home prices falling 0.2% in 2023 while mortgage rates average 6.4%. “We expect house prices to decline modestly, but the downside risks are elevated,” write Freddie Mac economists.
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