SAN ANTONIO – In just a couple of weeks, Broker Associate David Anderson said he feels confident about the 2024 real estate market.
“It’s going to be a very solid market,” Anderson said. “Everything that went was going wrong at the beginning of 2022 is going right in 2024.”
After a year with historic highs for home prices and even higher mortgage rates, some experts are predicting a few drops. Realtors say home prices are still high, but some forecasters predict that mortgage rates will drop. Anderson said this is a sigh of relief for many buyers.
“Historically, we know if there’s a recession, interest rates have historically come down,” Anderson said. “We know interest rates in the last 11 weeks have dropped continually. The last two weeks bumped up a little bit. But we know everything that falls quickly must come back up quickly.”
Anderson said 2024 is still a seller’s market, meaning the demand for people wanting to buy a home is still higher than the actual supply of people selling.
For those looking to sell, his advice is simple.
“Get your homes ready,” Anderson said. “Get them on the market now because if you wait till the competition gets there, you’re going to be behind the curve.”
New laws that went into effect on Jan. 1 could also impact the market.
Jon Taylor, a chair of the political science & geography department at UTSA, said laws involving property taxes and homeowners associations could create potential changes.
“This has been something that’s been pushed for a while,” Taylor said. “Regarding property taxes specifically, people need to keep in mind that it drives down local school district tax rates and doubles the homestead exemption.”
Proposition 4, which Texas voters approved in November, gives homeowners and businesses in the state a potential chance to cut thousands of dollars from their property tax bills in the coming years. The prop changes how public schools are funded.
“People need to keep in mind that just because we have property tax cuts does not mean that this is going to be set in stone permanently,” Taylor said.
House Bill 614 aims to provide HOA homeowners with more transparency for violations and charges.
“HOAs have to provide property owners with a list of what is not allowed,” Taylor said.