Stefani Berkin, President of R Real Estate, joins Cheddar to discuss the state of the real estate market, and give tips to homebuyers looking for prices to drop.

State of the Real Estate Market

the housing market is stuff for everyone right now. But especially for first time, homebuyers who are being pushed out by high prices, rising mortgage rates, low inventory. In fact, consumer confidence in the U. S. Housing market just plummeted to its lowest level on record here with some expert insight and hopefully some glimmer of hope on the real estate market is Stephanie Burke and president of our new york, Stephanie, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me first. Were you surprised about this drop in confidence when it comes to the housing market? Not really. Um The truth is is that people are worried about the cost of living and affordability and people have a lot of anxiety over inflation, how we're going to control it and how impactful it is for the housing market. So it's not surprising, but there actually is some opportunity in it. Which is this is a great time to buy. I know it seems a little crazy with interest rates being high, but because interest rates are high prices are coming down and so now is the opportunity to get the concessions, negotiate fiercely, get a great price. Yes, you'll have to lock in a higher rate. But you can always refinance when those rates drop. I do believe rates are going up before they come down. But if you're in the home buying process, you're playing the long game, you have to think about when rates do drop refinance, you've still gotten at that really low by, you know, it does seem like the housing market has been rough for a while now, especially with the pandemic. Can we can homebuyers expect these prices to drop kind of what you alluded to a moment ago. Yeah, I mean they're dropping right because people's monthly payments are now increased, right? The interest rates are up, the mortgages are up. So because that's a higher monthly payment in order to counterbalance that prices have to come down. So it depends on where you're living, right? We're still seeing bidding wars in certain places and in other places we're seeing a real strong buyer's market. But you have to remember we're comparing everything back to last year which was an anomaly of the year, it was a rocket ship. Right? So right now things are just cooling down. We're in a transition period, they're resetting so we don't need to freak out. We can just breathe and try to act in a really smart way. Let's talk about the rental market. What are things like for renters right now? They're a little tough. Yeah, they're a little tough because the interest rates that are higher that are pushing home buyers out of the buying market are putting people into the rental market. And so the rental market is hot, there's not a lot of inventory. So that's what makes making everything transact low inventory, pushing people out of the home buying. So rents are high and the escalation prices are really high also. So whereas during the pandemic, I encourage people to get into, you know really long leases at a discounted rate, think about maybe shortening the term right now, because these rates cannot sustain the rents can't sustain that, this like high price point, so be there being it for a little bit, for a shorter, limited period of time, hopefully they'll come back down and then you can extend that least what are the best cities to move into at least long term. So, you know, people are thinking because people still work virtually right? So proximity and commute is not as important. So people are thinking more about affordability, cost of living, access to good school systems. People want to be in a happy type of community Pittsburgh des Moines, columbus austin, people are really looking for that longevity and their exp exploring and we encourage people explore different neighborhoods because working from home for a lot of people is here to stay, I have about 15 seconds very quickly. Any advice to people wanting to sell their properties right now, you have to price right your your pricing for a very price sensitive buyer price right? Offer concessions like Abi down and showcase your property in the best light. As close to turnkey with as little work as possible. We'll go along with thank you for a great answer in such a short amount of time that Stephanie Birkin president of our new york, thank you so much. Stephanie