Where HOME PRICES Are Headed in 2022

It’s still a seller’s market, but higher mortgage rates will slow the torrid price increases.

- DANIEL BORTZ

After watching four homes go to competing bidders over the course of seven frustrating months, Shubham Nath and Ankur Srivastava finally nabbed a four-bedroom house in Warren, N.J., last June. The couple pounced on the property when it hit the market. “We saw the home on a Saturday, looked at it a second time that Sunday and made an offer Sunday night,” says Nath. And this time they were prepared to best the seven other bidders: They offered about $60,000 above the home’s $849,000 list price, plus a 2.5-month closing period so that the seller would have plenty of time to pack up and move. And when the property appraised for $7,000 below the price they had agreed upon in the purchase contract, the couple paid for the appraisal gap. “We jumped through a lot of hoops,” Nath says.

On the bright side, the house, about 35 miles west of New York City, has ample space for home offices for both Nath, 39, a data analyst, and Srivastava, 42, a software engineer. The basement has plenty of room for their 9-year-old daughter’s doll house and Lego projects. To sweeten the deal, they snagged a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 2.95% interest rate. And they had no trouble selling the 1,500-squarefoot townhome they were living in.

A RED-HOT MARKET