Could your gift for the holidays be a new home for you and your family? This holiday season might be a great opportunity to purchase a new home especially with the dip in prices as winter quickly nears. This recent Realtor article by Clare Trapasso shares the details on the sales of existing homes and the recent drop in median prices.
It’s not even Black Friday or Cyber Monday yet, but buyers may already be able to score a discount (though just a tiny one) on the homes of their dreams.
Median prices dipped 1.3% in October to hit $232,000 for existing (i.e. previously lived in) homes compared to a month earlier, according to a recent National Association of Realtors® report. However, prices were still 6% higher than October of last year.
Despite the price drop, sales still fell 8.2% to about 446,000 in October from September, according to the report. Sales and prices typically drop along with the temperature once summer ends and the kids go back to school, and then potential buyers and sellers get busy preparing for the holidays.
We looked at the numbers that were not seasonally adjusted, meaning they weren’t smoothed out over 12 months to compensate for the seasonal ups and downs of the housing market. Compared with October 2015, sales were up slightly this October, by 0.5%.
“The good news is that the tightening labor market is beginning to push up wages and the economy has lately shown signs of greater expansion,” NAR’s Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement. “These two factors and low mortgage rates have kept buyer interest at an elevated level so far.”
“Buyers are having more success lately despite low inventory [of homes on the market] and prices that continue to swiftly rise above incomes,” he said.
By far, the most existing home sales were in the South at about 179,000. But that was down 7.7% from September and roughly the same as October of last year, according to the report.
Median prices below the Mason-Dixon Line fell 1.7% from September, but were up 7.4% annually.
“Typically, sales do slow down somewhat in the winter just because the focus is on the holidays and a lot of people do take their houses off the market,” says longtime Montgomery, AL-based Realtor Kim McElroy of Keller Williams Realty. “But I see a spike of interest and calls right after the holidays.”
Part of that is driven by wannabe homeowners attempting to capitalize on low mortgage rates before they rise too much.
The warm weather and low housing costs have made Montgomery an appealing destination for out-of-towners leading to more suburban subdivisions being constructed, she says. The median list price in the metro is just $165,000—about 40.7% less than the national median.
[Read the full article here]
