US homeowners hit the jackpot. Median homes up 53% from Jan 2020 to Aug 2023

quote:

---

US homeowners who are downsizing are "lucky," Skylar Olsen, Zillow's chief economist, told MarketWatch.

US home prices have gained strongly since January 2020, which would help fund their next home purchase.

Those who are able to downsize without a mortgage are the luckiest, said Olsen.

US home sales may have plunged, but homeowners who are downsizing could still be striking the lottery on the back of strong price gains, an economist told MarketWatch on Wednesday.

"The reason why I say lucky is because what happened over the last three years was stunning and, in some ways, was a bit like winning the lottery," Skylar Olsen, the chief economist at real estate company Zillow, told MarketWatch.

For context, the value of the US housing market has surged about 50% from the pre-pandemic days in January 2020 to nearly $52 trillion now, Zillow reported Tuesday.

California is the US's most valuable housing market, Zillow says. The state's housing market is now worth over $10 trillion — nearly 20% of the national total. Other top US housing markets by value in the Zillow report include Florida, New York, Texas, and New Jersey.

The median price of an existing home in the US rose nearly 53% from $266,300 in January 2020 to $407,100 in August 2023, the National Association of Realtors found. Higher home prices and mortgage rates have hit home sales, which have plunged to about 4 million homes a year, down from about 6.6 million a year in late 2020, NAR reported.

---