Preliminary 2024 Housing Forecasts

6%+ Mortgage Rates, House Price Increases, Multi-family Starts Down Sharply

Towards the end of each year, I collect some housing forecasts for the following year - and also provide my own outlook. Several more forecast will be available in early December.

It is early, but for comparison, new home sales in 2023 will probably be around 675 thousand, up from 641 thousand in 2022.

Total housing starts will be around 1.38 million in 2023, down from 1.55 million in 2022.

Existing home sales will be around 4.1 million in 2023, down from 5.0 million in 2022.

As of July, Case-Shiller house prices were up 1.0% year-over-year, but the year-over-year change will likely increase further over the next couple of reports.

The table below shows several early forecasts for 2024:

Here are some of these forecasts. The Fannie Mae forecast is available here:

From the MBA here:

From the NAHB here:

A few key points from these early forecasts:

1. Forecasters expect house prices in increase next year.

2. Everyone expects multi-family starts to be down sharply in 2024.

3. 30-year fixed rate mortgages rates are expected to be above 6% next year (MBA is at 6.1%, NAHB is at 6.4%, and Fannie is at 6.9%)

I’ll have several more forecasts (and updated forecasts) by December.