I feel like a broken record at this point, but numbers have still been supportive of home prices going into 2022, even with rates continuing to steadily rise as we start the year. A question that gets asked a lot is “Why don’t we just build more homes?”, and the answer that is just a little more complicated than you would think. We all heard about lumber prices skyrocketing last year, but after a period of normalization, prices have been extremely high once again. Couple that with land shortages, supply chain issues, labor shortages, and permit timelines, we get to a point where they can’t build houses quick enough to support the growing population of first time home buyers. 

I posted a video this week talking about the current market landscape and how it differs from 2008 and the bubble we experiences then. Check it out in this link below:

Are We In a Bubble?

The crux of the video is that population growth is substantially higher than the amount of homes that are available in the market, as well as a negligible number of foreclosures in the market.

The market is closed for President’s Day, but we can see that last week we saw a decline in bonds followed by a little bit of a bounce off of a floor. This is a result of the Fed minutes coming out after their meeting in January. Tensions with the Russia/Ukraine conflict continues to make markets a little weary, so we will continue to watch that space and see how it might affect the real estate market.