Home prices aren't going down in a single major U.S. metropolitan area

Will this real estate bubble pop or deflate? One in five US homes is owned by an investor whose mortgage (investor loans are shorter term) will mature in the next 3-4 years. When that happens the rents paid (by the typical tenant) don't support the 3x higher interest rates and they'll need to sell. Will that take the gas out of the balloon? We're going to find out.

Home prices aren't going down in a single major U.S. metropolitan area

The median sale price of a home nationwide rose 4.8% from a year earlier to a near-record $383,188, according to Redfin

By Rocio Fabbro

PublishedYesterday

The U.S. housing market doesn’t look like it’s getting any more palatable for potential homebuyers anytime soon — at least not in the country’s major metropolitan areas.

In all 50 of the most populous U.S. metro areas, median home prices either climbed from a year earlier or stayed flat in the four weeks ended April 28, according to a new report by real estate services firm Redfin.

The median sale price of a home nationwide rose 4.8% from a year earlier to a near-record $383,188, Redfin found. This is being driven by a confluence of factors, including the number of new listings falling short of typical levels for April and persistently high mortgage rates.

Read more: Florida and Texas have a surging supply of houses — but people aren’t buying

And it’s not just home prices that are a headache for prospective homebuyers. The combination of these high prices with elevated mortgage rates has boosted the median monthly housing payment by 15% year-over-year to a record $2,890, according to Redfin.

The average rate on a 30-year-fixed mortgage ticked down slightly to 7.41% on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve said it would be holding rates steady, according to Mortgage News Daily’s daily data — but it remains high, hovering at about its highest daily level since last November.

Sean Salter, an associate professor of finance at Middle Tennessee State University, told Bankrate that he expects rates to dip following the Fed announcement, but that they will likely return to previous levels and even rise following the temporary reprieve.