From the NPR article I linked:
That's a blinking red light for Bill Wheaton, a housing economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Don't buy into a frenzy," Wheaton cautions. He says if you can find a house you can afford that you like, and you're planning to stay there for five years, buying makes sense.
But that is getting much harder to find. He says if you factor out inflation, the past one-year gain in home prices nationally is about 10%.
"It's never been that high," Wheaton says, "ever in the last 50 years, so there's really something going on."
Since the last housing crash, Wheaton says the country hasn't been building enough homes. And now there's a record low supply of homes for sale. Some builders went bankrupt, and workers found other types of jobs after the crash. Zoning rules can block construction of more affordable units. And the price of lumber has been soaring.
Meanwhile, interest rates are low, and with the pandemic people want more space. So there's plenty of demand.
Wheaton says, after a few years, builders in many areas will eventually catch up and there will be more homes from which to choose.
"At some point supply will kick in," Wheaton says.
