Key Takeaways:
- While the 20 top hottest housing markets are again located in Colorado, North Carolina, Florida and Texas, they’re also located in Tennessee, Oregon, Georgia and Arizona. Three of the top five hottest markets in both June and December were Durham, Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, mostly thanks to strong buyer demand and relatively high affordability.
- Markets to watch that improved the most between June and December 2023 include Cleveland, Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Detroit. Cleveland’s HMI score jumped 8.8 points to 62.3, mostly due to a rise in its demand index thanks to a rapidly improving job market accompanied by a falling unemployment rate.
- The most resilient markets that improved between December 2022 and December 2023 were led by Greeley, Colorado, Miami, Oklahoma City and San Jose, California. Greeley’s HMI score spiked up 13.2 points to 68.6, mostly due to an improving supply index resulting from a moderate increase in inventory coupled with a surge in homebuilder confidence.
Despite 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rates falling to about 6.8% from October’s highs, which approached 8.0%, the national U.S. housing market remains somewhat frozen given the huge share of existing owners locked in place with mortgages well below 6%.
However, with continuing signs that inflation is ebbing and predictions that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting its own rates by the middle of 2024, if mortgage rates also decline, the market should slowly…
