Steve Murray on the future of the housing market

Today’s HousingWire Daily features a crossover episode with RealTrending, a podcast that focuses on interviewing the brightest minds in real estate and the housing market.

In this episode, Steve Murray, RealTrends advisor and industry stalwart, takes a forward look at the housing market from 2022 to 2024, also offering input on recent litigation noise and giving brokers insight into this year’s RealTrends 500 rankings.

Here is a small preview of the interview, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

The future of the housing market: We’re still creating as many households as we’re building housing, both multifamily and single-family. The problem is that we’re looking at a 4- to 5-million housing deficit from the 2010 to 2020 period. That is, there were 4 to 5 million households formed, more than there were houses built for them. We’re seeing the implications of that in today’s market. However, while we think this is overheated, remember that in 2020 existing home sales were up 5.6%. That’s not earth-shattering.

Litigation: Consumers are very aware that commissions are negotiable and frequently consumers negotiate to reduce their commission costs in a transaction. Consumer and the housing market data proves that. The next key point is that many of these lawsuits seem to put forth the argument that, if buyers didn’t have to pay as much commission, a seller would reduce their price. Is that true?

Top brokerage company insights: The RealTrends 500 (RT500), from 2010 to 2020, doubled the number of agents at their brokerage firms. That’s an increase of 100% over 10 years, while the Realtor membership count grew at about 38%. So, the RT500 picked up a significant market share among the number of agents that are working for an RT500 firm. Interestingly enough, the number of transactions done by the RT500 firms was slightly more than double by about six points.

HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported from the HousingWire newsroom. Each afternoon, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsroom that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted by the HW team and produced by Alcynna Lloyd and Victoria Wickham.