The market has changed!
Is it still a full on sellers market? Yes it sure is. What you think you are overpaying for today will still look good in 6 months. But there are some not so subtle changes as a perfect storm of increased inventory, buyer fatigue, COVID easing and the return to the normal ebbs and flows of the calendar.
Over the last year due to the COVID lockdown and the serious supply and demand imbalance the normal cycle of the calendar got leveled out. Buyers weren’t frantic to buy a house in June and July so they could go on vacation in August and have their kids in the preferred school district come September. They were just frantic to find and win a decent house! The calendar became kind of irrelevant. Now the hottest ticket in town is a beach rental in August. Good luck with that one. People are feeling like they have been let out of jail and are sprinting to enjoy the return to normalcy: Going on vacations, having barbecues, and actually preparing for their kids to go to school.
Many have had it with writing incredible contracts multiple times and not getting the house, and have resigned themselves to staying put or going to a rental for a year and then re-engaging.
This has major implications for both buyers and sellers. For sellers now instead of 50 showings maybe you get 20 or 30, and instead of 15 contracts you get 5 or 6. You can in fact overprice a home and given how quickly homes are selling if you make that mistake now and have to take a price reduction several weeks into your listing it’s incredibly penal and you will end up with less than if you took the proper pricing strategy up front. What this means for buyers is that while others are going to the sideline, those who continue to battle for a property are afforded a relative buying opportunity. So stay optimistic and engaged as you are in a much better situation than earlier in the Spring.
This market still has a lot of legs in it. Despite the high median price tag and aggressive price appreciation of the last 2 years our region is still down the list of areas that are the least affordable relative to local incomes. A fantastic local job market and continued low interest rates are helping there.
Reach out to me about these or any other real estate topics.
It’s a good life.
Chris
