Market direction

George Lorimer
Thursday, February 23, 2023
Market direction
Call George Lorimer to Sell Your Home at 619-846-1244 - Buy Before You Sell

CAUTION TO SELLERS: At the moment, home values are NOT rising. In this market, overpricing a home will hinder its sale and eat up important market time. With this being said, now is the best seller market since April of 2022. Home values will increase again once rates drop significantly from here to at least the mid-5s. Click here for your updated home value.

CAUTION TO BUYERS: Making lowball offers to buy and searching for a "bargain" are both fruitless endeavors. Due to the high mortgage rate environment, the market has favored purchasers. Most buyers hoped prices would continue to drop, but this didn't happen. Instead, prices dropped by 8-10% last year and are stabilizing to mildly increasing. 

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With the sharp decline in market times, that advantage is disappearing. Sellers are not in a rush to sell; there is no panic in today's market. Instead, a successful method for isolating a home is carefully arriving at a purchase offer based on the home's Fair Market Value.
 

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It is essential to remember that demand is still muted compared to years past for this time of year. It is 38% lower than the 3-year average before the pandemic (2017 to 2019) and 25% lower than in the middle of February last year. The high mortgage rate environment still prevents many prospective buyers from purchasing a property due to affordability restrictions. If rates fell to the mid-5s, demand would increase significantly. Demand is rising quickly in this limited marketplace, a trend that is slowly reversing. Market times are subsequently falling.

The Expected Market Time, which measures the time between listing a home to changing to pending status, fell to its lowest point since June last year. The shift is apparent to buyers on the front lines. Homes are selling much more quickly all of a sudden. Buyers are losing some of the momentum they had built up over the previous six months as market times decline. It does not imply, however, that buyers will go above and above the asking price.

The housing market has not yet returned to the insane, instantaneous pace during the pandemic years of 2020 through the first half of last year. It does imply that the impact on declining property values will be diminished by increasing competition. From now until mid-March, demand will significantly rise. Even if demand numbers are exceptionally low, they will continue to increase sharply from this point. More activity is forthcoming.

More people will readily buy, especially if interest rates eventually fall. Many buyers who put their home hunt on hold over the holidays will be prepared to begin their search again.

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