“There’s still a lack of homes for sale, so it is a seller’s market, but the houses that are overpriced are tending not to move,” said Ralph DiBugnara, CEO of Home Qualified, an online real estate information and lending resource. By comparison, 52 percent of respondents had characterized the current market as a good time to buy a house a year earlier. “Prices are still going to go up this year,” he said, although he also said the rate of increase is likely to cool after last year’s torrid double-digit jumps.Īs soaring demand sent prices into the stratosphere last year, would-be homebuyers often found themselves in bidding wars, or were forced to make a snap decision on the biggest financial commitment of their lives. The results of a December survey suggest that house-hunters have tempered their optimism, or might choose to stay on the sidelines for the near future: The Fannie Mae Home Purchase Sentiment Index found that while 76 percent of those surveyed said the present is a good time to sell a house, just 26 percent said it is a good time to buy. “We haven’t seen the fundamentals change to indicate that prices are going to come down,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist for Navy Federal Credit Union. Other experts have slightly lower projection for price appreciation, but no one sees a reversal any time soon.
There’s no expectation that prices will fall, but our forecast suggests that price appreciation will slow.