Zillow Survey Predicts Austin will be the Nation’s Hottest Housing Market, Leading a Sunbelt Surge
More affordable metros are replacing expensive coastal areas as top drivers of home value growth
— A panel of economists and real estate experts expect Austin to outperform the national market by the largest margin, followed by Phoenix, Nashville, Tampa and Denver
— Expensive coastal markets New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are most likely to underperform, though Zillow expects growth in every market
— Key tailwinds include an improved economic outlook underpinned by progress on coronavirus vaccines, while affordability and available supply are potential drags
SEATTLE, Jan. 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Austin will be America’s hottest housing market in 2021, leading a list of mostly Sun Belt cities expected to continue heating up faster than the nation’s large coastal markets, according to a new Zillow® survey of experts.
The booming Texas destination heads a lineup of sunny and relatively affordable metro areas — Phoenix, Nashville, Tampa and Denver — that are most likely to outperform the nation in home value growth, according to a panel of economists and real estate experts recently surveyed by Zillow.
The Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey, sponsored by Zillow and conducted quarterly by Pulsenomics LLC, asks a large panel of economists, investment strategists and real estate experts for their predictions about the U.S. housing market. The Q4 survey also asked about their expectations for 2021 home value growth in 20 large markets compared to the nation.
An overwhelming 84% of those surveyed said Austin values would out-perform the national average, compared to just 9% who believe it would fare worse. Phoenix came in second with 69%, followed by Nashville (67%), Tampa (60%), and Denver (56%). Page views on Zillow for-sale listings in Austin by out-of-town searchers were up 87% in November compared to 2019.
The top-five metros are all affordable options compared to expensive coastal areas that have led home appreciation ranks in recent years, providing relative value for Millennials looking to take advantage of low mortgage rates to buy their first home. The top five are also, for the most part, sunny locales. Four of the five counties holding the largest cities in these MSAs all rank in the top-third of counties in the contiguous U.S. for average daily sunlight, according to NASA data analysed in The Washington Post. Davidson County, home to Nashville, ranked just below the midline.
“The pandemic has not upended the housing market so much as accelerated trends we saw coming into 2020,” said Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker. “These Sun Belt destinations are migration magnets thanks to relatively affordable, family-sized homes, booming economies and sunny weather. Record-low mortgage rates and the increased demand for living space, coupled with a surge of Millennials buying their first homes, will keep the pressure on home prices there for the foreseeable future.”
An improved economic outlook thanks to COVID-19 vaccine roll-outs and better treatments was pegged as the most likely tailwind for the housing market in 2021, followed by sustained strength in first-time home buying among Millennials. It proved a powerful demand driver in 2020 and is expected to persist for years to come.
We wondered what might happen when Zillow changed from a search portal to a brokerage last week.
Zillow showed us who’s the boss.
They deleted the last 50-100 sales from EVERY agent I checked, and ALL active listings were wiped off the agent profile.
They also tweaked my headshot!
None of my past sales on Zillow had any connection to the MLS – they were all manually uploaded, so this wasn’t a MLS-related event. So I guess Zillow deliberately removed the past sales and active listings!
They haven’t responded to requests as to why, or whether they will put them back.
The MLS-listed properties used to have the listing agent plus the three-headed combo of Premier Agents who were prominently featured in the right-hand column. The PAs pay hefty advertising fees for placement, but now they are listed below the schools which is down towards the bottom of the listing. They are called ‘personal guides’ now:
The listing agent does get a one-liner mention too.
Zillow demonstrated their killer instinct previously when they tried to squash Trulia by out-spending them on advertising. Then Zillow bought Trulia and made them a sidekick. Has anyone heard of Trulia lately?
The days of Zillow playing nice with agents are over.
Today’s realtors might survive as long as the baby boomers, who are the only people left who might remember – and appreciate – getting good help. After that, Zillow will declare that the cabal has been broken, and convince you that all you need is a transactional brokerage to handle your paperwork.
An update from the agent on the new listing (now pending) in La Costa Oaks:
27 showings, 8 offers significantly over asking. It was crazy! So many buyers from the Bay Area!
I had seven agents contact me for details about my sale that’s pending across the street. Because of the old wives’ tale about not divulging the sales price before closing, most agents don’t expect much from these calls, and just hope for a crumb to take back to their buyers about pricing.
I told the listing agent, and all seven buyer-agents, that my sales price was $1,470,000.
Transparency is good for everyone. The closest we can get to open auctions, the better – where all the evidence is available to everyone to make decisions with. My primary responsibility is to my sellers, who benefit from a higher price nearby that keeps our buyers happy and closing as scheduled.
The agent didn’t offer her sales price, but we’ll come back later and revisit. Key fact is the number of offers. I had three, and she had eight offers. Could demand be increasing as we get past the holidays? Zillow expects pricing to go higher than in 2020, which means a crazier market in 2021 than we’ve had recently!
LOCAL OBSERVATIONS AS WE ENTER 2021:
There are 20-30 buyer groups looking to pay $1,300,000 – $1,500,000 for a tract home around La Costa Oaks and maybe/probably La Costa Valley. There have been 92 sales this year in that range, and last year we had 50.
There are 30+ groups who looked at a 1980s one-story 3,000sf home in Encinitas for $1.6M.
There are hundreds of buyers for homes under $1,000,000 in Carlsbad & Encinitas.
There are unlimited buyers for one-story homes with nice ocean views – at any price.
Attractive pricing works!
Results will vary for sellers of homes that are older, unique, and not staged properly. Buyers are going to be picky, which means the creampuffs will be hot, and everything else will be……well, we’ll see!
It makes sense to build communities in the desert and run them off solar. In the video, she says they want to build one for 100,000 people!
Phoenix, that featureless and ever-spreading tundra of concrete, has been called “the world’s least sustainable city.” It has been characterized as a “sprawling, suburbanite wasteland” and “a monument to man’s arrogance.” The Onion has darkly predicted that by 2050, “most of Earth’s landmass” will be swallowed by the encroaching Phoenix exurbs. The Walk Score index ranks the place as the second-worst big city in America for pedestrians, and traversing it has been described as “a slog through a desert, plus the occasional McDonald’s.”
The Phoenix metropolitan area is, in other words, the last place you would expect a real estate developer to spend $170 million creating what it calls the first-ever car-free neighborhood built from scratch in the United States.
The development, Culdesac Tempe, is a 17-acre lot just across the Salt River from Phoenix.
Currently a mess of dust and heavy equipment, the site will eventually feature 761 apartments, 16,000 square feet of retail, 1,000 residents — and exactly zero places for them to park. The people who live there will be contractually forbidden to park a car on site or on nearby streets, part of a deal the development company struck with the government to assuage fears of clogged parking in surrounding neighborhoods.
Culdesac Tempe is a proving ground for a start-up also called Culdesac, which was founded in San Francisco and moved to Tempe during the pandemic. Started in 2018 by two native Arizonans, the company announced the project last year to a mixture of curiosity and doubt. Urbanists cheered it as a bold and important step toward a future with fewer cars, while suburban developers said the concept could never work on a large scale.
We’re undergoing the first major shift in transportation since the interstate highway system. Private car ownership is giving ground to transportation that is on-demand, shared, and (on average) more environmentally friendly. That 1-mile trip to get ice cream is increasingly happening on shared bikes, electric scooters, or on foot. Lyft Shared and Uber Pool make daily trips more affordable. And there is a renewed interest in public transit investment, including the expansion of the light rail in Phoenix.
People have responded by making different personal choices. In 1983, 46% of 16-year-olds had licenses. Today, it’s just 24%. Fewer cars, less roadway, far less parking. New possibilities for how we live.
The pandemic is still raging, the President of the United States is in the hospital, the election is right around the corner, and so are the holidays. The frenzy has to slow down at some point, doesn’t it?
So I schedule for 11am, and show up to find today’s list of showings taped to the front door:
The listing agent happens to be there, so we discuss the current market conditions. She is a long-time independent broker like myself (who now also works @ Compass) and we agree that the environment is ripe to convert to single agency naturally, and buyer-agents being eliminated.
It’s not because it’s what best for everyone involved, because clearly it’s not good for buyers and sellers – except maybe for those sellers who live in the house being barraged by showings the first few days on the market. It doesn’t sound like much of a price to pay, but for homebodies, or those with little kids & pets, it can be a major inconvenience.
Zillow is the only entity who spends eight or nine figures per year on advertising, so they will control our destiny – and with them setting up brokerage units manned by employee-agents in all 50 states, you can get a feel for what’s ahead.
In the meantime, consider these developments.
Today’s listing agents are making it harder to show and sell their listings, they are lowering the buyer-agent commissions (and taking the difference), and some realtors are advertising guaranteed cash offers as the better way to sell your house.
As is the case throughout America, the truth doesn’t matter nearly as much as how loud you can scream.
The greed displayed by these listing agents feeds upon itself, because other agents witness these practices happening without any reprimands, and they start to believe it’s acceptable…..and then they do the same thing. The game is evolving into how to beat the buyer-agents out of their commission.
In the short-term, realtors can justify this revolution by pointing to the commercial brokers who have practiced their real estate like this all along. Heck, less competition will slow down the rapid price increases we are experiencing, and help to trim the over-population of realtors everywhere too….so you can say there are good things about it.
But it all plays into the hands of Zillow, and eventually they will be who processes your order.
The pandemic is being blamed for people leaving town.
I think it’s more that Covid-19 is the last straw that is causing people to take the action they would have taken at some point anyway. The ‘rona will be gone in 1-18 months – moving is a major life-changing event.
But these two conflicting articles probably demonstrate who is being impacted.
On one hand, we have people – probably those who want/need to be economical – who are moving themselves and are being ripped off by the rental-truck agencies (hat tip SM):
But a survey of full-service moving companies describe a different scenario:
Are people in the U.S. migrating during the coronavirus crisis in different ways than pre-pandemic? Are they leaving cities? Moving to the suburbs? These are popular questions without definitive answers — yet. But there is some data emerging that can paint a better picture of Americans’ geographic response to the pandemic.
One thing’s for certain: So far, there is little support for the dramatic claims that people are fleeingcities writ large. In fact, available data indicates that overall, fewer people moved at all since the beginning of stay-at-home orders and through June — even with interest in moving on the rise again.
Among those who have moved, it’s unclear how many of those moves will be only temporary. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting migration takeaways worth following. A select few cities including New York City and San Francisco do seem to be seeing more out-migration than most. But guess where many of those people are going? Other very large metropolitan areas, like Seattle and Los Angeles.
If there is a perception that the pandemic has ushered in a mass migration, it is not supported by the data. According to figures from two national moving companies, Americans moved less during the pandemic than they normally would have, not more.
Several surveys have found that the great majority of people who did move duringthe first months of the pandemic did so for reasons unrelated to the coronavirus. In one such survey of 1,300 individuals conducted by Hire A Helper, just 15% said they had relocated because of Covid-19.Out of these pandemic-induced migrations, 37% of respondents said they moved because they could not afford current housingdue to a Covid-related income loss. Thirty-three percent of the respondents said that they moved to shelter in place with friends or family, and 24% that they didn’t feel safe where they were.
A Pew Research Center survey in June looked more closely at Americans who said they did make pandemic-induced moves. It found that overall, young people between the ages of 18 and 29 were moving because of Covid-19 in higher numbers, whether permanently or temporarily (college closing for in-person education might be to blame, at least partially.) Only 3% of the respondents said they had moved because of Covid-19, and 6% said someone else had moved in with them because of it.
What the pandemic is exposing is the gap between the haves and have-nots.
Those who are moving are seeking financial relief – either homeowners cashing in their home-equity lottery ticket and moving down, or those who flee so they can afford to start their American dream in a cheaper area.
The affluent don’t have to worry about that stuff. But they’ll move closer to the grandkids!
The turnover and upgrading of neighborhoods is commonly called gentrification, and what it means around here is that the affluent buyers (many, if not most, from outside the county) take over the real estate market, one house at a time.
Their money does the talking – they pay more for houses because they can.
Those with the most horsepower tend to gravitate towards the coast, and once they arrive, they stay – heck, it’s paradise! This has been happening for the last 100 years.
As a result, the North San Diego County coastal region is comprised of older homes, and homeowners who have lived here for 20, 30 or 40 years. We are overdue for more turnover!
Who will be selling in the next 1-2 years?
Homeowners used to be more mobile when real estate was civil. There were up & down cycles that kept a throttle on pricing, and moving up was more feasible. For example, you could have bought a home in the mid-to-late 1980s, had a kid or two, and then in the mid-to-late 1990s move up to a bigger home without too much financial strain because the market took a dip in between. But if you bought anytime before 2015, it is extremely tough now to justify a move-up today due to the much-higher home prices and property taxes – unless you really need it.
Once the covid & politics simmer down (i.e., Spring, 2021), we should have more boomer liquidations.
We have to – they own all the houses around here, and they will be the only ones moving – they are the market. We will be dependent upon how many of them will be clearing out.
Oh, you say, “Boomers are settled in, and they’re not moving!”
It certainly has been the trend for the last ten years, but we’re all much older now. Isn’t it inevitable that more boomers – or their kids – will be selling? Each day, 12,000 Americans celebrate their 60th birthday – look how it’s stacking up:
Even if the vast majority of boomers don’t sell in the next 1-2 years, there will be more selling than we’ve had recently. Covid-19 has added a new dimension that held back the majority of boomers – 57% are waiting to put their home on the market, which means a potential surge next spring:
The number of boomers selling will be different in each neighborhood, and they will be selling for different reasons besides just being old:
Be closer to grandkids.
They need the money.
Kids need the money.
Neighborhood has changed.
Tired of the maintenance.
Politics.
We’ll have the usual number of home sales due to death, divorce, and job transfers (The Big Three). It will be the number of younger boomers, ages 60-75, that move for the reasons above that will supplement the supply and create more balance between sellers and buyers than we’ve had in recent years.
More balance = more sales, and less pressure on prices.
It’s a fine line though. A few more sales would build more comps to keep prices rising faster. But if we get 57% more listings in one spring, the competition will settle down and pricing will do the same.
Results will vary in each neighborhood. Just do a count – how many homeowners around you are 60+ years old? Don’t be surprised if you see more of them move in the next 1-2 years than ever before.
Catherine asked what I thought about the next 1-2 years of real estate.
First let’s discuss why real estate in the future won’t be like it’s been in the past – we’re out of dirt. Here’s my conversation with Bill Davidson in 2012 about the future of home-building in San Diego:
This is from 2015:
“We’ll be the Bay Area in no time,” said Borre Winckel, president and CEO of the Building Industry Association of San Diego. “We can offer very few product lines for the middle-class buyer.”
San Francisco was once a quirky, counter-cultural city that was home to a bevy of activists, artists and writers. But that city is vanishing because of sky-high housing costs. Now, only the elite can afford to live in the city and, like in Manhattan, low- and middle-income workers are forced to live further afield and make long commutes to their jobs.
San Diego is not far behind. It is already the nation’s fifth most expensive housing market, according to the National Association of Realtors. Only an estimated 25 percent of households can afford the median home price.
Even more troubling, most of the apartment units under construction are higher end, catering to wealthier millennials.
“My lament is that we’re royally screwing the housing opportunity for the middle class and young people,” Winckel said.
San Diego’s population grew by 159,000 people from 2010 to 2014, but the region added only 22,000 housing units in that time, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
With today’s supply and demand being so out of whack, the outcome is being determined by money. Our home prices have risen steadily over the last ten years (which has never happened, at least since I’ve been around), and it looks like it will continue.
It’s the basis for any forecast, and with that said, let’s explore what could happen, shall we?
This article is written by a professor at the Wharton School who has a book coming out this week. It appears we have a glut of boomers – will we stay put, or sell the family homestead (once the covid is solved) and explore the world during retirement?
Population aging is a powerful force. By 2030 the population above age 60 will have grown so much that other generations like millennials and Gen-Z will be outnumbered by them in Europe, China, Japan and the United States.
Each day, 12,000 Americans celebrate their 60th birthday; in China, 54,000; and in the world, about 210,000, according to the United Nations Population Division. The pandemic will only accelerate this trend given the predictable decline in fertility — which tends to occur whenever unemployment is high — and the shifting demographics of cases and deaths, which are trending younger as time goes by.
The 60+ crowd will become very important economically for three reasons.
First, they own more than half of the net worth around the world, a proportion that reaches 80 percent in the United States, according to a study by the Federal Reserve. Second, the same study concluded that the net worth of seniors is more evenly distributed than among younger age groups, and poverty rates are also lower. And third, their incomes tend to be more resilient because many of them depend on pensions or investment income, and they can do some work on the side to cover potential shortfalls.
Not all seniors are financially secure, but they tend to be less exposed to large-scale financial disruption during episodes of crisis. Moreover, there are 25 percent more women above the age of 60 than men, they tend to be much better at managing their money and making it last, and they account for a smaller percentage of COVID-related health problems and hospitalizations, mainly because they heed the advice of health authorities and they have more robust anti-viral immune responses to begin with.
The gray market is quickly becoming in vogue because ever larger proportions of seniors are enjoying life by using their income and wealth wisely to procure goods and services that enhance their experiences.
Moreover, a 70-year-old nowadays lives the life of a 50-year-old in the 1980s.
The pandemic has also accelerated the technological savviness of this group, and not just in the area of e-commerce. In fact, a study in the Journal of Gerontology found that use of the Internet increases cognitive functioning rather than vice versa. Myriad new applications in virtual reality, robotics, and artificial intelligence are seeking to capture a rapidly growing market.
Other areas of technology will help seniors live longer and more fulfilling lives. Virtual reality can stimulate motor functions and the overall performance of the nervous system, and it can help reduce loneliness, a key problem afflicting large numbers of people at advanced ages. Artificial intelligence and robotics will also contribute to quality of life. Over the last decade, Japanese companies have invested heavily in robotics to aid with daily tasks like lifting weights, conduct physiotherapy sessions, and provide for companionship.
