Study: Baltimore Is 2024’s 2nd Worst Real Estate Market
With home values up around 3.3% in the past year and mortgage rates remaining high, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on the Best Real Estate Markets in 2024, as well as expert commentary, to identify the most attractive cities for home-buyers and real estate professionals.
WalletHub compared 300 cities across 17 key metrics. The data set ranges from median home-price appreciation to housing affordability to job growth.
Health of Baltimore’s Real-Estate Market (1=Best; 150=Avg.):
- 292nd – Share of Seriously Underwater Mortgages
- 182nd – Median Days on the Market
- 266th – Median Home-Price Appreciation
- 294th – Job Growth Rate
- 282nd – Foreclosure Rate
- 288th – % of Delinquent Mortgage Holders
- 72nd – Home Price as % of Income
- 258th – Maintenance Costs as % of Income
Baltimore ranks 299th overall and 67th among large cities.
For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/
Key takeaways and WalletHub commentary are included below in text and video format.
“Current home prices are extremely important, but there’s much more that you need to look at when determining the health of a city’s real estate market. Factors like the cost of living, the potential for the value of homes to increase, the availability of recently-built homes and the quality of the city’s job market are all important to consider in conjunction with asking prices and interest rates. The best cities may not always be the cheapest, but they offer excellent housing options and long-term stability.”
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“McKinney, TX, has the best real-estate market in the U.S., in large part because of its recent growth. McKinney has the second-highest share of houses that were built between 2010 and 2021, at 35%, which means that new buyers have a lot of options for houses that may not need major maintenance for a while. In addition, McKinney ranks in the 50 least expensive cities for maintenance and telephone costs, and the 40 least expensive for energy costs. To top things off, McKinney has the 13th-highest job growth rate in the nation, at nearly 14% annually.”
– Cassandra Happe, WalletHub Analyst
Expert Commentary
Is now a good time to buy? What economic indicators should potential buyers be watching?
“Housing markets are affected by macro trends, nonetheless, housing markets are essentially local. For those who are first-time homebuyers, now is a good time to buy. In some of the strongest markets inventories are at historic lows but waiting for interest rates to fall and for inventory to increase, is also waiting for more buyers – who can bid up prices – to enter the market. Because you will want to refinance when rates fall, make sure your mortgage does not have a prepayment penalty.”
Rosalind Greenstein – Lecturer, Tufts University
“The answer is it depends. If you anticipate relocating in a few years, then you run the risk of a downturn in values that you do not have sufficient time to offset. Of course, there is also the issue of interest rates. They are significantly higher than they were just a couple of years ago. Couple that with the fact that values, while starting to show signs of softening on some markets, have generally not fallen as would be typical when interest rates are increased as rapidly as they were last year. Keeping all this in mind, if you are planning to stay in the house for a significant period and your budget is such that you can manage payments and continued upkeep, every dollar of your mortgage that goes into equity is building your wealth over what you are paying in rent.”
Dr. Brent Smith – Kornblau Scholar, Virginia Commonwealth University
Why are Millennials still sitting out of the housing market? What can be done to increase homeownership rates for this cohort?
“More than 50% of Millennials own homes, but ownership rates are lower than earlier generations, especially the Baby Boomers. Gen Z buyers face an especially challenging market as price grew significantly in recent years, not to mention the current rate environment. I am not sure what can be done except to encourage young workers to save for a down payment. As Gen Z workers age, establish careers, marry and have children, home purchases will follow suit.”
Stuart Norton – Associate Director, Alabama Center for Real Estate (ACRE), The University of Alabama
“Millennials who are renting and are unsure about homeownership remember the Great Recession (the oldest Millennials graduated college in 2008) and the foreclosures and challenging job market that came in its wake. If we want to increase homeownership rates for this cohort we need to increase the supply of owner-occupied housing, not the supply of investor-owned housing.”
Rosalind Greenstein – Lecturer, Tufts University
What trends are impacting the housing market in 2024? Will it crash or boom?
“The trend in 2024 is generally more of the same. Nationally, prices started increasing in early 2012, following the financial crisis, and they have been rising since. As observed the rate of increase has been higher, since the reopening of the economy post COVID and, other than a small dip in 2022 the pace continues into this year. Will it crash or boom? Given sufficient time the answer is yes and yes. Will there be a collapse or price boom in 2024, so long as there are no dramatic events such as war, recession, pandemic etc., it is unlikely there will be any dramatic swings in the housing market over the next year.”
Dr. Brent Smith – Kornblau Scholar, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Buying activity has slowed in response to 7% rates, but prices have held steady due to limited inventory, growing at 4.1% Y/Y nationwide in June. However, the best asset to own long-term, especially in times of inflation, is real estate. For 2025, I expect demand to increase in response to rates falling to 6% by year end, with home prices appreciating 2-3%.”
Stuart Norton – Associate Director, Alabama Center for Real Estate (ACRE), The University of Alabama
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