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The white-hot housing market has largely been proclaimed by major media outlets as having “peaked.” Forbes said that housing prices peaked in June, while Reuters estimated back in July that a peak in the market had already been reached.
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Indeed, home prices were up 17% in June from the 12 months prior. The market has seen such a surge that over 50% of homes have sold above their asking price in 2021.
After the June high, the number of new mortgages and homes sold cooled slightly, leading many to believe that the housing market had finally begun its downward course.
Ed Pinto, director of the American Enterprise Institutes Housing Center and former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae, believes otherwise, Fortune reported.
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In a conversation with Fortune, Pinto said, “Over the past three or four months, we’ve heard lots of hand-ringing about a buyers’ strike, talk that people aren’t buying as many homes as before … That’s a fake narrative.”
Although he agrees prices have come off slightly, he noted that autumn ushers in a different kind of market than the one seen during the summer — but nonetheless, still high. He said that June is always a high month for home sales, as buyers need to close on homes by the end of summer in order to get their children into a new school. “That’s when we always see peak purchase volumes as measured by [the] number of new loans,” he told Fortune. The normal seasonal regression of home sales has, perhaps, led many to prematurely call a peak in the market.
“What matters is that purchase volumes are extremely high for this time of year,” he said, meaning that although home prices have followed the normal seasonal pattern of slowing down after a summer rush, they are still at historic highs.
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Buying activity is well above the numbers in the fall of 2019, which means that 2021 is “really strong,” Pinto said. Purchase volumes for the week of Oct. 18-24 stood at 54% above the same week in 2019.
Pinto projected a 14%-16% increase in …….