I wanted to take a break from the typical mortgage rate breakdown to show you a chart that really stuck out to me today. The chart shows U.S. house prices rose 6.6 percent between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index, with strong growth seen in states across the country. PA specifically rose 7.9% which shows that even compared to the nationwide average PA is showing strong home appreciation. I’m sure those numbers are even greater when factoring areas around Philly suburbs.

To put that in perspective, an 8% appreciation on a $500,000 home is $40,000! On top of that if someone decided to rent instead of buying that home that means that on top of paying an extra $40,000 for the same home they also missed out on $40,000 in home appreciation. This is great information to share to clients next time they are worried about increasing their offer to get them across the finish line. While that doesn’t mean that this type of growth will continue, if people are waiting for prices to go down in any meaningful way anytime soon I think it’s safe to say that is going to be a bad bet.