Home buying slows during the holidays, but the market shift and mortgage rates create opportunities for buyers willing to move when others aren't. The speaker breaks down timing, rates, and what's actually happening in the market right now.
Are you planning to wait till after the holidays to buy your new home? If that's the case, I completely understand. But keep in mind, you're not alone. Here's a couple things you probably should know. So every year around this time, I hear that many buyers would wait till after the holidays, after the first of the year, until things slow down and they could focus on buying a house. However, many people say this, and that means you wait until the housing market gets busy again and more buyers pop back up, which means more competition, which means higher home prices. And during the holiday season, the mortgage market pulls back a little bit. They know that the markets close four days and if something were to happen to the economy on an extended weekend and rates can't change because they're locked in, they pull back a little bit and increase slightly to kind of offset that risk. But assuming we make it through the holidays with no issues in the economy, well, then rates will decompress and get better. We had a good PCE inflation report today would know it because the rates have kind of pulled back. Normally we would have gotten better rates. Today we'll see these gains once we get through the holiday season. Then as things get back to normal on January 11, the big CPI inflation report comes out and that could be another big day for mortgage rates. So if you wait until the herd of buyers come back into the market and then better reports come out to lower mortgage rates, it's going to start to be a buying frenzy. You have a two week window here around the holidays where you'll probably get your absolute best deal if you find a motivated seller that needs to sell now.
