In case you missed it: Bloomberg reports that Lennar, facing a falloff in demand, is offering 5,000 homes to investors.

Zillow Revises its Forecast (again.)

Say what you will about Zillow, they're BIG in the housing sector, and they have access to a truly insane amount of real estate data. That makes their forecasts worth some coverage, and this month brought another revision to their outlook.

As of December (looking at November's data,) Zillow has officially abandoned hope of a green 2023, and they now anticipate a 0.7% decline in home prices from November 2022 to November 2023 (as reported by Lance Lambert at Fortune Magazine.)

For some perspective, that's an adjustment to their most recent forecast of a 1.2% increase; as recently as March of 2022, they were betting on a whopping 17.8% increase (safe to say that one aged like milk.)

Despite the chilly outlook, Zillow, as usual, remains cautiously optimistic about buyer activity in the new year -- only time will tell.

Prices Just Keep on Falling

Like we mentioned yesterday, today brings the release of the two major home price indices, and lo and behold, we're still in the red, posting a 0.5% decline nationally (based on October's data)

Though year over year numbers have stayed positive on a national level, local markets are a different story. On the high end, Florida's four major cities remain well in the green (from 16-22% YoY,) but San Fransisco, Austin, and San Jose are officially ending the year down or flat.

ALL EYES ON RATES

We'll have a better grasp on rates when the market's had a chance to work through the long weekend, but we're seeing bond yields (and, therefore, mortgage rates) edging slightly higher to start out the day.

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