Looking to buy? Market knowledge is key

By Tim Farkas / For NYVT Media

If you’re looking to buy a house in 2023, knowing that prices, mortgage rates and inflation are high while inventory remains low is important to keep in mind.

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage topped 7% in October – at 7.08% – for the first time in two decades, according to national mortgage giant Freddie Mac. The rate last Thursday was 6.6% – lower than the October high – but the March figure still dwarfed the 4.16% rate from a year earlier.

In Washington County, the median price of a house in December climbed to $215,000, up nearly 20% from a year earlier, according to the Greater Capital Association of Realtors.

Usually, when mortgage rates increase, real estate prices go down. But because there is still such a shortage of homes for sale, prices have continued to rise. The one-two punch of high mortgage rates and increasing housing prices has made it impossible for many people to buy homes, said Nadia Evangelou, a senior economist and director of real estate research at the National Association of Realtors.

“Many buyers have been priced out,” she said.

On average nationwide, a new monthly mortgage in November – when rates again topped 7% – cost about $900 more than it did a year before that, Evangelou said.

Laura Burns, CEO of the Greater Capital Association of Realtors, could not be reached for comment by NYVT Media, but she told the Times Union of Albany in January that current conditions in the housing market weren’t good for those looking to buy a home early in 2023.

“My advice is to wait it out until the spring and see what happens with the market then,” she said.

One way for shoppers to fight back on the negatives is to team up.

The National Association of Realtors reported that in 2022, a record-high 5% of first-time buyers were “other household compositions” – in other words, something different than single, coupled or married.

Jocelyn Wright, a certified financial planner in Pennsylvania, told the personal finance company NerdWallet that she combined funds with her sister to buy a house in 2017.

“It’s not going to be forever, necessarily, but this gave us the opportunity to have our own home, and we can leverage the equity and all of that going forward,” she said.

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