Almost one four in four people still think home prices are going to come down. If you’re one of the people worried about that, here’s what you need to know. A lot of that fear is probably coming from what you’re hearing in the media or reading online. But here’s the thing to remember. Negative news sells. That means, you may not be getting the full picture. You may only be getting bit of it to get your attention. Housing market headlines are everywhere. Many are quite sensational, ending with exclamation points or predicting impending doom for the industry. The sensationalizing of headlines and content, has been an issue since the dawn of the internet, and housing news is not immune to it

From January 2023 to January 2024, there have been 11 months that home values have increased .2 percent to .9 percent.  In two of the 13-month look, we had slight reductions at an average of -0.1 percent! This is what the media focuses on.  They publish a graph of red for the declines and green for the increases.  It depends on what you are drawn to.  Home values rose the majority of the year, that is the story!  Since negative news sells, drawing attention to these slight dips happens often. But that loses sight of the bigger picture. 

Here’s what this data really says. There are a lot more increases and decreases. And even for the two decreases, they’re so slight, they’re practically flat. If you look at the year as a whole, home prices still rose overall.

It’s perfectly normal in the housing market for home price growth to slow down in the winter. That’s because fewer people move during the holidays and at the start of the year, so there’s not as much upward pressure on home prices during that time. That’s why, you see the lower home values in the range I gave you above. The data shows that, as a whole, home prices rose over the past year. If you have questions about what’s happening with home prices in your local area, contact The Marzeotti Group or with a trusted real estate professional.