What’s Up with Real Estate?

National news and local views for the week ending Friday, September 15, 2023

Higher oil prices lifted “headline” CPI (consumer inflation), but “core” CPI continued to ease – and the Fed cares more about “core” when it comes to its interest rate policy. But even with 30-yr mortgage rates above 7%, home prices continue to move up month-over-month.

Softer “core”

The recent surge in oil prices caused “Headline” CPI (consumer inflation) to RISE from 3.3% year-over-year in July to 3.7% YoY in August. But “Core” CPI (which excludes food and energy prices) dropped from 4.7% YoY to 4.4%. The Fed cares more about “core” (because it can’t control what food or energy prices do), so this decline is great news. But…we’re still well above the Fed’s target of 2%.

Prices keep rising

According to data provider CoreLogic, national home prices in July rose 0.4% month-over-month and 2.5% year-over-year. That means that year-to-date, national home prices have already jumped 5.2%! A few big cities in the west (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, etc.) are still posting YoY declines, but CoreLogic thinks they’ll be back to posting gains by October of this year.

‘Skip’ or ‘stop’?

The next Fed interest rate decision will be made on Sept 20. At this stage, pretty much everyone expects that the Fed will keep rates steady (i.e., NOT hike). But what about next month? Will this just be the second ‘skip’, or will the Fed finally ‘stop’ after 11 rate hikes since Feb 2022? The answer will depend on the trends in inflation AND employment as we move into the 4th quarter.

Local Market Trends

As of Friday, September 15, 2023

Do you want to know what’s happening in your area? I serve Northern Utah and I can provide you with that data…below are a few areas

Area	Median Price	Active Listings	New Listings – 5 days	Median Days on Market
Layton, UT	$615,000 0%	105 0%	2	41 0.2%
Farmington, UT	$682,000 0.1%	56 0.2%	2	41 -0.2%
Kaysville, UT	$670,000 -0.1%	57 0%	–	36 -0.2%
South Weber, UT	$504,999 0%	26 -0.6%	–	118 1.1%