Podcast episode 2

The hosts discuss their Christmas celebrations and a holiday party they attended. They then move on to talk about the real estate market, stating that economists are split on whether housing prices will decline or increase. They mention predictions from Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, which suggest a potential drop of 5% to 20%. They emphasize that the real estate market is cyclical and that there are still opportunities to buy and sell homes. They speculate that mortgage rates may impact home prices and that prices may go up by the end of the next year. They stress the importance of working with a trusted advisor. They mention that in Las Vegas, the demand for homes has slowed, with fewer listings being added. They provide statistics on median sales prices and mention a bet they have on the end-of-year median sales price. They invite listeners to comment with their predictions. They conclude by promoting their Instagram accounts and teasing future episodes where they will discuss end-o Hello, hello, and welcome to episode two of The Real Agents of Las Vegas. I'm Dorothy, and with me, I have Raquel. This week, we're going to talk about the market. I don't think we've touched on that yet, but first, last week was Christmas. I just love Christmas. It was so nice. How was your Christmas? It was wonderful. My family was in town. I got to spend some time with them, the crazy bunch. That's fun. That is great. I just love spending time with my family. I don't know. For some reason, it felt more special that it was on a Sunday. It felt like I had more time to prepare. Did it for you, too? Sunday is the best day for Christmas, because we really got Friday. We have Saturday, and then we have Monday, too. It's a whole weekend. I know. I feel the same. I feel the same. We also had our holiday party. It was over at Vic and Anthony's at the Golden Nugget. Oh, my God. Right, Raquel? It was fancy. The lights are down low, and the people are dressed to the nines. It's got old-school Vegas romance and fabulousness. Yes, definitely. The fact that it was downtown, the atmosphere was incredible. If you guys go, make sure you do a shout-out to Noah. He's a bartender out there. Go to him and see what his recommendations are. He was fantastic. He was three for three for me. The food, too, was amazing. Amazing food. Perfectly cooked to eat. Absolutely. Our teen boot camp is starting in a couple of weeks, so we're going to be kicking off the year strong. I'm excited for that. Raquel, are you excited, too? Oh, yeah. Boot camp kicks our butts into gear. It gets us ready for the new year and all the hard work that we're going to be doing this next coming year. It's a great way to start off the year. Okay, cool. Let's get to the real estate market numbers. Yeah. We've been reading a lot of things. We're looking at Las Vegas data, but most of this data is collected on a nationwide level. On the nationwide level, a lot of economists are split, half and half. A lot of them think that in Vegas especially, but overall in the United States, housing prices are going to be declining. That's half of them. Half of them think that they're going to be declining, and the other half think that they might be increasing. Right. Who knows who to trust? You have a 50-50 chance to see if they're going to go up or go down. Right. We didn't know that before. A lot of this data, we have some Goldman Sachs predictions and Wells Fargo's predictions. A lot of them think that they're going to drop anywhere between 5% up to 20% depending on how bad this recession will get. What do you think of that? Well, I think the one thing that is important to just reiterate is that the real estate market is cyclical. It always has been. It always goes up and it always comes down. Just be aware of that. People seem to buy homes in any market. A lot of the articles you're going to read are doom and gloom. I think that depending on your situation, there's always a good time to buy a house, even if it's an investment property or maybe even it's your primary residence. That's why talking to a trusted advisor is so important these days. I just can't even emphasize that enough that people are still buying houses. They're still selling houses. Yeah, I do. I think that that's a big one to remember. Yeah. Me personally, I think that they might be going up at the end of the next year because I think mortgage rates, like some people have, the other half have been talking about mortgage rates are going to stay at this level, maybe drop a little bit. If they stay at this level or drop a little bit, then home prices will stay pretty consistent. What are your thoughts? Yeah, you know, I think that the one thing that we also forget is interest rates are right around 5 and 6 percent. And in the grand scheme of things, that's not a bad interest rate. The pandemic brought about a time where they needed to get the market moving. So those interest rates dropped well below 3 percent. I think it was an anomaly. I don't know that we'll ever see interest rates that low again. And if you took that little block of time of the pandemic out and you just looked at the interest rates going year over year, it's probably right where we would be anyways. So I think you're right. I think that as soon as home prices are going to offset because of the interest rates, interest rates go up, your payment goes up. So what happens? Prices have to come down. It's just kind of what has to happen. The affordability is definitely not there at the moment. So there's going to need to be some adjustment as soon as that happens and people can start affording to buy again. I think that you're right. I think that the prices are probably going to go back up a little bit by the end of next year anyways. You're totally right, though, about the trust professional, because you read all of these titles and they're all doom and gloom and they're all prices are crashing and mortgages are increasing. But in reality, when you look at the numbers, there's always going to be something that's affordable for you. So just breaking it down, working with a professional and then seeing what those numbers are, I think is always the best step, even if you're reading those titles and you're not sure what to do next. Yeah, for sure. So but for Las Vegas, we did get our final reports in and the demand definitely has stalled. Our number of homes going under contract and listings coming to the market have definitely slowed down. Again, I think because of the interest rates and also the holiday seasonal activity that happens. Sellers have also slowed their roll. We have had the fewest number of listings added since before COVID. Only 2,608 houses went up for sale. They actually went up, listed their home in November for last month, and that's including single family homes, condos and townhomes, which is crazy. Wow. Yeah. We ended November with $434,500 as a median sales price. And we have an ongoing bet here at the office and we ended last year, so ended 2021 at $430,000. So it's crazy because that means that all of the equity from 2022 is pretty much gone. And we have a running bet here that we were talking about and we all guess at where we think the end of December where we're going to be at for the median sales price. And Raquel, do you remember what you predicted? Yes. In Las Vegas, I think at the end of December, the median sales price will be $425,000. That's a really, really solid guess, especially because we watched the weekly numbers as well. And I'm just going with my gut because back in October, I do market watch videos too. I predicted that the end of this year was going to be at $430,000. I think it's a little bit high, but I'm going to go with it because I picked that number three months ago. So we'll see. We have as low as $425,000 all the way up to $433,000. So we'll be here next week to tell you who won that contest. Make sure to comment below what you think your prediction is for the end of December, what the median house price will be in Las Vegas. How fun. I would love to see what everybody thinks. So thanks so much for joining us today. If you want to find us on Instagram, you can find me at Dorothy Sierra. And I'm going to be at at Raquel Diggs Real Estate. That's awesome. So find us, ask us our questions, and we'll see you next week. We're going to find out who won our contest. And then the future episode, we're going to talk about the end of year numbers and our predictions for 2023. All right. Don't forget to comment below what you think your predictions are going to be. And like and subscribe anywhere you can hear a podcast. Transcribed by https://otter.ai