Monthly Home Prices Are On the Rise | Bedford NY Homes by Robert Paul

 

Are higher monthly mortgage payments a good or bad trend for the economy?

It’s probably bad, but either way, rising home payments are increasingly a fact of life for new homeowners, as house payments for U.S. homebuyers rose by 21% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The hike in monthly payments is forged from two separate real estate trends — rising median prices and higher interest rates, reports RealtyTrac, the Irvine, Calif., housing data provider.

The firm says that, in the last quarter of 2013, median home prices rose by 10% and interest rates rose by 33%, on average, in 325 counties.

The monthly payment hike covers the full gamut of homeownership expenses for an average three-bedroom home — data reached by combining mortgage, insurance, taxes and maintenance and by subtracting the estimated income tax benefit, RealtyTrac reports.

So that 21% figure is surprisingly high, especially as higher home prices significantly outpace household incomes, which are virtually stagnant.

“A potent combination of rapidly rising home prices and the often-overlooked but significant uptick in interest rates in the second half of 2013 caused the monthly cost of owning a home using traditional financing to jump substantially in many markets over the last year,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.

“The monthly cost of owning a home is still less than renting in the majority of markets, but the cost of financed homeownership is becoming dangerously disconnected with still-stagnant median incomes, driven not by shoddy underwriting practices this time around but by investors and other cash buyers who are not tethered to the typical affordability constraints,” he adds.

 

 

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