If you’ve been sitting on the fence about selling your home, it might just be the right time to jump off! According to Jonathan Smoke, chief economist of REALTOR.com, “Nothing is bad for sellers today. Sellers have been in the driver’s seat for the last two years, but this year is shaping up to be even better for several reasons.”
SO … Get Off the Fence … Get Packing AND Get Moving!
1. Mortgage rates are still low
Low mortgage interest rates translate to lower monthly costs for buyers. Lower costs will entice buyers, which is good for sellers. Although mortgage rates have been inching up since mid-October to slightly over 4%, the mortgage rates for a 30-year fixed, the most popular home loan, are still hovering near 30-year lows. For the time being!
“We expect them to hold at this (4%) level for a while and continue to adjust up,” says Danielle Hale, managing director of housing research for The National Association of Realtors®. “Mortgage rates rarely move in a straight line. They could be in the 4.6% to 4.8% range by the end of the year.”
What does that have to do with being a home seller? The answer is that potential buyers will want to hustle to close on a home BEFORE a rate hike. Higher interest rates equate to less “buying power” which means a lesser priced home. Experts say that the tipping point is when rates reach 5% or higher, potentially putting the brakes on the current robust real estate market.
2. Inventory is shrinking
Plain & Simple – Low housing supply and high buyer demand equates to rising prices. That’s a GOOD thing for sellers! State-wide, according to quarterly reports obtained from Florida Realtors®, there were 92,558 homes on the market for the first quarter 2017. That’s nearly a 5% drop from the same time in 2016 with 97,360 Florida homes available for sale.
On a more hyper-local basis, the number of single family homes available for sale in the Hernando County Association of REALTORS MLS recently plunged below 1,000 homes, a drop of 15% over 2016 levels. As I am writing this blog post, this morning’s count is 944. Having been in the Florida real estate industry in Hernando County since 2001 with Century 21 Alliance Realty, I cannot remember our housing inventory ever having reached such a low level. Real estate experts predict that home inventory levels will continue to shrink, at least for the foreseeable future.
OH … one more thing – Not only are there fewer homes for sale, but the number of days on the market before a home goes under contract has decreased year over year, as well. The “Average Days on Market” for a Hernando County single family home was 60 days for the 1st Q 2017 in comparison to 67 days for the same time in 2016. That equates to a 12% decrease in the number of days before a home goes under contract! If priced correctly, the typical home should be under contract pretty quickly. That’s another GOOD thing for sellers!
3. Home prices are rising
Shrinking home inventory levels coupled with strong buyer demand has elevated home prices. Statewide, the quarterly reports also indicate the “Average Sale Price” of an existing single-family home increased to $311,062 in the 1st Q 2017. That’s up 8.7% from $286,099 in the 1st Q 2016. Now looking at the same 1st Q comparisons for our Hernando County Association of REALTORS MLS, the “Average Sale Price” was up by nearly 20% to $158,296 in 2017 compared to $132,308 in 2016.
Rising prices benefit those sellers whose property value plunged during the recession. Thanks to increasing prices, many homeowners whose homes were “underwater” can now sell without suffering a big loss.
4. Job markets are strengthening
Consumer confidence is climbing which spurs buyers to jump into the market—which is, you guessed it—more GOOD news for sellers! Jonathon Smoke continues to say, “If people are confident, they’re more likely to buy big-ticket items like houses and cars. And then they spend more money on other things.”
Here’s the ONLY BAD NEWS for sellers – If you sell your home today, you’ll most likely be buying another one. That means you’ll be on the other “side of the fence” as a buyer. With that, sellers can rent for a while with hopes that prices come down in the future. But, whatever you save on the price of a house, you could surrender when mortgage rates climb to 6%—as predicted for 2019 and 2020, Smoke says.
We hope you found this post to be helpful, informative and interesting … Watch for our next blog on July 13th. If you are interested in staying on top of up-to-date Hernando County market conditions, be sure to visit www.homesinthesunteam.com/hernando-county-market-conditions
Thinking of buying or selling in the Spring Hill, Brooksville, Weeki Wachee and Hernando Beach areas of Hernando County, Florida? Our state-of-the-art, MLS Map Search Feature makes it easy for BUYERS to SEARCH MLS listings and for SELLERS to SEE what their competition is doing!
Until then… it’s all about YOU!