This Is When the Housing Market Will Favor Buyers

If you haven’t been furiously refreshing Zillow for the past couple of months, here’s a bit of news for you: It’s a seller’s market right now. Even if you’re not pining over a dream home currently, you might know that, well, because the thought of buying a home hasn’t even popped into your head anytime recently. It feels that far away because, if anything, the only stories you’ve heard about buying homes have been from friends and family members who have been in massive bidding wars or have received over-asking price in markets like New York City and the Bay Area.

But that all might be changing sometime in the new future. According to a new analysis from Zillow, the housing market might finally favor buyers in 2020. For the survey, Zillow and Pulsenomics LLC asked more than 100 real estate economists and experts about what they thought would happen to the housing market in the near future. Of those surveyed, 43 percent of respondents said that they believe the market will favor buyers start in 2020.

Some places might even swing favor sooner. Those who know midwest is best will be rewarded for their forward thinking in 2019—the respondents point to the region entering a buyer’s market a full year before the rest of the country.

Though this may seem very exciting for those clutching their coin purses, know that there is a caveat to the news: It will get worse for home buyers before it gets better. According to the study, experts predict that home values will still rise nationally (around 5.9 percent) until the end of the year before dropping to under 3 percent in 2020 and beyond.

“Conditions are starting to show signs of easing up, but the effects of years of limited construction still linger,” says Aaron Terrazas, senior economist at Zillow. “Inventory is still falling on an annual basis, and home values are growing well above their historic pace.”

This is all in line with Zillow’s previous predictions. In a previous piece for us, Jonathan Miller, founder and president of the real estate consulting firm Miller Samuel Inc., predicted that the future might hold a neutralized home value growth rate, corrected market, and opportunities to buy more affordably… but in exchange for a national economic recession. Additionally, the federal reserve has been hinting at rising interest rates for the past couple of months. So while a housing reprieve may be in your future, it still might come at a cost.