Orange County Housing Market Forecast February 2024: The market is shifting

[@kenyaswallow5782]

i wish you were my realtor. What do you think of Trabuco Canyon area? my offer got accepted but I am scared of all this process and having a second thought about the location because it feels kinda deep and somewhat far from i5. My work is in irvine but commute is still 30 min.. which isn't too bad

[@JoshAlexanderRealEstate]

I'm an outdoors person so I like the area personally because of the outdoor hiking, biking options. However like you said it's pretty remove and far away from most things so 4 things to consider. 1) How often do you leave you house to go out(dinner, grocery shopping, entertainment, dr appointments, etc) and how far away are those type of things from you. The commute time can really start wearing on you if you need to do a lot of driving around. 2) Have you looked into insurance yet? That area is mostly designated a high fire zone which means if it's a single family home then insurance can be very pricy and if its an HOA expect that HOA cost to continue rising faster than a lot of other areas in OC as they have to cover the increasing cost of insurance as well. 3) What are your other options? Is there anywhere else you can live that is 30 minutes or less from your work that would be a better fit? 4) When you buy a home you want to generally plan on being there 5+ years to make sure you have a better chance of the home appreciating enough to make money when you eventually go to sell it and to ride out most bumps and dips in the housing market. If you plan on being in the home less than 5 year your risk goes up if you end up not liking the area and want to sell and move somewhere else. Hope that helps!

[@s.gharavi1614]

OC prices have always had extreme price fluctuations and yet stubbornly slow to adjust. Unemployment increasing is what's going to change the paradigm.

[@JoshAlexanderRealEstate]

Correct, really the only way to see enough inventory hitting the market would be a mass long term layoff event in Orange County that would eventually force people to sell their homes at a faster rate while at the same time keeping them from buying new ones(the vast majority of home sellers are also buyers too).

[@s.gharavi1614]

@@JoshAlexanderRealEstate it doesn't need to be "mass layoffs", just a significant rise in unemployment in 2024. But home prices aren't going to go UP either anytime soon, especially when adjusted for inflation and carrying costs because Interest rates will not drop much this year and will never go back down to even close to where they were. So it's just a long, slow standoff. Which way the market breaks, to the upside or downside, largely depends on macro economics in 2025 or 2026. But I'd guess that we'll be still mostly sideways for several years. That's why it makes little sense to buy a house right now for most people and in just areas in OC. The short term month over month or quarter over quarter numbers are just a distraction from seeing the overall mid term situation. Long term, the US has been an eroding slowly since the early 1970s and that trend can only end one way. But it'll take many decades more to unfold.