According to the latest national index produced by Florida Atlantic University and Florida International University faculty, current market signs indicate that most U.S. housing markets are approaching a peak in the real estate cycle.

However, their predictions say that contrary to what has happened after a peak in the past, there’s little evidence to suggest prices will plummet.

The research faculty at Florida Atlantic University ranks 19th in the world for their intellectual contributions to the real estate industry through their publications in top real estate academic journals, according to the Journal of Real Estate Literature.

Daniel Gropper, Ph.D., dean of FAU’s College of Business explains, “Real estate is a vital part of the Florida economy … [so] we have assembled an excellent group of research faculty who are thought leaders and we continue to see this as an area of potential growth for the university.”

Rankings are based on the number of publications in the top three peer-reviewed, finance-based real estate journals, including the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, the Journal of Real Estate Research and Real Estate Economics.

And their report, the Beracha, Hardin & Johnson Buy vs. Rent (BH&J) Index, published quarterly two months after the end of each quarter, shows that while housing prices have been rising steadily since 2012 in most parts of the country, they’ve begun to slow.

This slowing then suggests that the market may be nearing its peak in around the U.S., according to Ken Johnson, Ph.D., a real estate economist and one of the index’s creators in FAU’s College of Business.

But Johnson insists that this is good news as this time around, the market is pulling back from the brink – which failed to happen when the bubble burst in 2007.

Of the 23 metro areas in the BH&J Index, 13 are slightly to moderately in ‘buy’ territory, while 10 metro areas are slightly to moderately in ‘rent’ territory.

Based on numbers from the end of the fourth quarter of 2017, the latest BH&J Buy vs. Rent Index supports recent S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index scores, which showed home prices rose 6.3 percent over the past year – the fastest 12-month pace in more than three years, as potential home buyers jockeyed to buy limited available inventory.

And while both the BH&J Index and Case-Shiller Home Price Index employ housing price appreciation from markets around the U.S., only the BH&J Index includes additional sources – rent prices, mortgage rates and alternative investment data streams, and other variables – to indicate why and when housing markets might change direction.

Their data indicates that prices are above their 40-year trend but not as significantly as they were in 2007, according to Eli Beracha, Ph.D., co-creator of the index and associate professor in the Hollo School of Real Estate at FIU.

Beracha suggests that rather than a crash, he anticipates slower growth in prices accompanied by longer marketing times for sellers and increasing inventories, bringing prices back in line with their 40-year trend.

By now, we’re all likely intimately familiar with how much the real estate market ebbs and flows with cyclical changes, trends and new predictions but one thing will always remain constant: At DeLeon Sheffield Company, we’re here to guide you seamlessly and painlessly through either buying or selling a home, regardless of market conditions, every step of the way.

Because at DeLeon Sheffield Company, ‘We’re More Than Realty; We’re Family.’