– 2023 “Gold” – E24

Brokers’ forecasts range between 2.5 and 5 percent this year, but they agree that house prices will fall.

Closing will come on Friday. January numbers for the housing market weren’t unexpectedly positive – and now they might be, but when asked when the bottom was reached, most people answered as chief economist Kjetil Olsen at Nordea Markets.

– Not on Friday.

Nordea now expects the interest rate to peak at 3.75% by summer or fall, up from a previous upward revision to 3.5% earlier this month.

– We believe that 2023 is “gone”. You have to go into 2024 for a little refresher, Olsen says, and that’s our “hunch” right now.

The weight of the meat will be heavy

The main interest rate in Norway is currently 2.75 percent. In the central bank’s latest report from December, the interest rate was expected to rise around 3 percent, with a slight chance of another increase after that. However, a lot has happened since then.

In January, inflation (price growth) rose to 7 percent year-on-year. Well above the Bank of Norway’s target of a 2 percent rate increase.

Here at home, economic growth, home prices and inflation were much higher than the Bank of Norway assumed when the central bank delivered its latest interest rate forecast in December.

“Friday can get positive quickly, because there have been so many optimistic messages, at least in parts of the market, but ultimately we imagine meat will weigh a lot,” Olsen says.

They have long believed that home prices should fall between 5-10 percent from top to bottom.

Now 10 per cent seems more likely than 5 per cent, with the new interest rate path. In any case, the purchasing power is greatly reduced in the housing market. Sure, and more than that, but they’ve shown quite a bit of resistance so far.

Wait until fall

Danske Bank chief economist Frank Gollum was quick to point out that the numbers show something different from expectations.

When did the home price bottom?

Prices appear to have bottomed out in December, based on actual numbers. But I think they will continue to fall, and when they hit rock bottom depends on how big of a rate hike we get this year, Jullum says.

As long as interest rates rise, prices are under pressure.

Danske Bank believes that the last Norges rate hike will come in June. Then, as usual, you have to factor in some delay before it affects home prices.

– There will be a slight delay, but it is normal for housing prices to fall in the fall. We think it will stabilize and pick up again in the second half of the year. But again, if you get four increments instead of the two that are starting to be priced into the market now, it will take longer, he says.

Maybe already in April

In Handelsbanken, the indication is that the house price is likely to have already arrived in April.

Interest rate forecasts have now been revised somewhat upward, but the development so far has been more recent than expected. Without doing the math again, I think we sum up the same distance. We will continue to do this for a long time, says chief economist Marius Jonsholt-Hof.

– Now there will be numbers on Friday, and we believe in a positive development there, but then we envision new months with declines after that, if the interest rate will rise as it seems now.

But to DNB Markets chief economist Kerry Amdahl, it may seem like homebuyers should be on the lookout now.

“We don’t think it’s going to be a very V-shaped bottom, but it’s going to get flatter, and we’re actually lying there now,” says Aamdal.

They expect February prices to fall by a few tenths of a percentage point, but Aamdal points out that there was a few tenths of an increase in December, when seasonally adjusted prices rose 0.2%.

In January, they remained seasonally adjusted.

— So we think the bottom is now, and we expect prices to pick up again from the second quarter. But it is precisely at periods like these that it is not entirely certain where exactly the trough is. After all, most people would agree that the policy rate should go up a bit, he says.