- Home prices will fall for a brief period before trending higher, according to Black Knight analyst Andy Walden.
- That's because housing stock levels are plunging, recently falling to their lowest level since April 2022.
US home prices are likely to drop for a brief period over the next few months before slumping inventory levels revive the housing market, according to Black Knight's Andy Walden.
"I think [the rate of house-price growth] starts to inflect here over the next couple of months," the mortgage data provider's vice president of enterprise research told $4 Tuesday.
"I think we get below 0% for a very, very small handful of months here and then you see that start to trend higher," Walden added.
The total number of US homes for sale $4 last month, according to a $4 published Thursday.
Economists believe that the slump in supply could drive up prices – even though a combination of $4 and a surge in mortgage rates has weighed on demand for housing.
"There's just not enough supply out there – so even with demand suppressed, I think you're going to continue to see prices firm up and trend higher over the next few months," Walden told CNBC.
The Black Knight analyst isn't alone in predicting that low inventory levels will revive the housing market.
Zillow's chief economist Skylar Olsen said last week that $4 year-on-year by the end of 2023, due to the rapid fall in supply.
Declining inventory "is a big, huge, massive part of the picture," she told $4 last Monday.
"Only two months ago, before we saw these radically low new listings numbers, we were forecasting something much more like 1.2%, something small," Olsen added. "Now, 5% – that's on the hotter side of steady and stable."