Home Advice Home Improvement
2023’s Top Kitchen Trends Are All About Saving Money, Honey
By Jennifer Kelly Geddes
Jan 10, 2023
Is your kitchen begging for some updates or a full-on makeover? Then you’ll want to be up on the latest design trends and keep the environment in mind, too.
A new survey of 3,600 homeowners by Houzz has found that an overwhelming majority of people planning a kitchen renovation this year (92%) are looking to include eco-friendly features.
Some of the most popular upgrades chosen include energy-saving appliances (61%) and LED lights (65%), as well as more efficient windows (27%) and fixtures that conserve water (34%).
Yet saving the earth is actually more of a side benefit to homeowners’ main goal: saving money.
According to Houzz staff economist Marine Sargsyan, “the most frequent reason behind choosing sustainable options is long-run cost effectiveness, with environmental-friendliness as a secondary consideration.”
Saving cash isn’t easy, though, given the median spend on minor kitchen renovations has shot up 40% year over year, to $14,000. Meanwhile, the money plunked down for major overhauls (which include replacing all appliances and cabinets) has remained steady at $45,000.
Here’s a detailed look at the report’s findings, which might get some ideas cooking on how to change up your own kitchen, too.
A new year, a new style
As has been the pattern over the past few years, 83% of homeowners who are delving into a kitchen rehab are changing the room’s style. Top designs include transitional (23%), followed by modern (14%) and contemporary (12%). Still love the modern farmhouse look? It remains in the mix and even went up a point from last year, to 11%.
Open floor plans are still going strong
When it comes to kitchen design, the open plan is still in vogue. Last year, interest in this look dropped a bit, but per the latest numbers, 40% of renovating homeowners are opting for cook spaces that are open to the rest of their interiors, which is up from 38% in the previous year.
What’s more, 20% of folks are even looking to open up their new kitchens to the outdoors, with a set of double doors or row of doors taking the top choice (46%), a single door after that (29%), and a pass-through window last, at 14%.
As the new year kicked off, the wild run-ups in rental prices that terrorized tenants last year appear to have leveled off.
January was the 12th month in row where rent growth slowed, according to the Realtor.com® monthly rental report. Monthly rents were down $ 80 from the peak in August, but they were still up 2.9% year over year, to hit a median $ 1,726 a month in the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas.
(Realtor.com looked at rents for studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, condos, townhomes, and single-family homes in the 50 largest metros. Metros include the main city and surrounding towns, suburbs, and smaller urban areas.
“The biggest takeaway is while the rental growth is slowing, the affordability concerns continue,” says Realtor.com Senior Economist Jiayi Xu.
Tenants have been grappling with sticker shock as rental prices soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many couples and individuals moved out on their own, while others were would-be homeowners who were trapped in rentals after being outbid or priced out of the for-sale housing market. This strained the limited supply of rentals, driving prices upward.
Rents were the lowest in Oklahoma City, the only one of the 50 largest metros where tenants can still find a home for just under $ 1,000 a month. Median rents in the metro were $ 982. Louisville, KY, and Birmingham, AL, rounded out the top three most affordable metros with median rents of $ 1,167 and $ 1,178 respectively.
But renters in those lower-priced parts of the country shouldn’t get too comfortable. Prices rose the most in the cheaper Midwest and South metros, going up 10.5% year over year in Indianapolis, 8.8% in Birmingham, and 8.3% in Columbus, OH.
Meanwhile, rents dropped the most in some of the hottest real estate markets during the pandemic. Monthly rents went down 6.2% in Las Vegas, 3.8% in New Orleans, 3.6% in Sacramento, CA, 3.4% in Phoenix, and 1.4% in Austin, TX.
“With high rents across the country, places that offer relative affordability tend to be in high demand, which means more competition and that these lower prices might not last ” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in a statement. “Many of these metros have fewer available rental homes than [in] previous months, and fewer apartments to choose from means prices are likely to go up.”
Rents also jumped the most for studios, typically the smallest units. They rose 3.9% year over year in January, to a median of $ 1,417 . For one-bedroom apartments, rents increased 2.8% to $ 1,609, for two-bedroom units, rents ticked up 2.5% to $ 1,934 a month.
Prices might wind up rising in some of the nation’s priciest metros as companies order workers back to their offices. That could mean prices jump in places like Silicon Valley’s San Jose, CA, and San Francisco. The median rents in the cities were $ 3,005 and $ 2,809 a month respectively.
“People may move from suburban or cheaper metros to tech hubs because of return to office mandates,” says Xu. “It will boost rental demand once more and increase rental prices.”
Americans Woefully Misinformed About Nation's Housing Market
Daniel DeVise The Hill January 23, 2023
A new survey finds Americans are woefully misinformed about the nation’s mercurial housing market, even as millions of them prepare to buy homes.
Twenty-eight million Americans plan to purchase a home in 2023, according to a survey released Tuesday by NerdWallet, the personal finance company. On average, they hope to spend $269,200.
But that figure falls more than $100,000 short of the median home price, which was $388,100 in December, according to the real estate brokerage Redfin. Home prices crossed the $269,000 threshold sometime in 2013, Federal Reserve statistics show.
If prospective homebuyers sound oddly optimistic about prices, that may be because they are pessimistic about the state of the housing market. Two-thirds of Americans surveyed said they expect an imminent crash.
Real estate economists do not. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, forecast an average sale price of $385,800 this year, about the same as last year. Redfin predicts a 4 percent drop: bad news for sellers, but hardly a crash.
“Home prices already have been falling, especially on the West Coast, and prices will fall in some cities in 2023,” said Holden Lewis, a home and mortgages expert for NerdWallet. “But a drop in home prices isn’t necessarily a crash.”
Another head-scratcher: 61 percent of Americans told pollsters current mortgage rates are unprecedented, meaning that they have never been seen before.
“We actually defined it,” said Elizabeth Renter, data analyst for NerdWallet.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 6.15 percent last week, according to the Fed. That’s higher than most mortgage rates of the past few years, which have ranged below 3 percent at times.
But it is not unprecedented. Over the last 50 years, NerdWallet reports, 30-year mortgage rates have averaged 7.75 percent. Mortgage rates in the 6 to 7 percent range were common as recently as 2008.
Homebuyers have basked in a climate of historically low rates for more than a decade. The Fed cut rates dramatically in the Great Recession of 2008 to stimulate the economy, a campaign that continued, on and off, through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Runaway inflation prompted a dramatic series of hikes in 2022, which pushed mortgage rates back to “normal” levels, at least in a historical sense.
The new survey of 2,051 American adults, conducted by the Harris Poll for NerdWallet, is the latest iteration of an annual poll. Pollsters have found overconfident home shoppers for several consecutive years.
“We know from the past five years, roughly 10 percent of Americans say they’re going to purchase a home in the next 12 months, which is wildly optimistic,” Renter said. “Part of it could be that they’re unaware of what’s going on in the housing market.
The survey found more realism when asking respondents how their homebuying plans had panned out in 2022.
Seventy percent of Americans who had planned to buy a home in 2022 did not succeed. Some of them made offers that were not accepted. Others shelved their plans because they couldn’t find affordable homes.
With over 20 years experience in Fairfield County real estate, Rob has seen both the market’s high and low points. His approach to his clients has remained the same. Survey the market daily to understand where it is trending, work with a limited number of seller and buyer clients to give them the best possible service, and establish a rapport of openness and honesty.
On average, Rob’s listings sell at nearly 95% of asking price, testament to his outstanding pricing acumen and understanding of market conditions. He has served as the Chairman of the Technology Committee for the Mid-Fairfield County Association of Realtors and as its representative on the state level. Rob resides in Westport with his family.