Buying a single family home in 2017 will feel like you’ve bounded onto a subway train just as the doors are closing – Your heart’s pumping and you’re breathless, BUT you made it – just in the nick of time.
Maybe that’s a bit extreme. However, consider these factors: Interest rates have begun to rise and will likely climb higher. Inventory is low and could shrink more. Home prices are increasing and they’re not expected to fall any time soon.
SO … If you don’t jump onboard the “Real Estate Train” now, you might be too late.
“It’s tough to buy a home today in most places in the country because there are so few homes for sale,” according to Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for realtor.com®. “But if you wait to buy, then you’re gambling that the market will be better for you to purchase in the future.”
1. Rates Could Rise
In 1981, when mortgage interest rates hit as high as 18%, single-digit home loan interest rates seemed an unlikelihood!
Rising mortgage interest rates aren’t necessarily a deal breaker for buyers. The National Association of Realtors® calculated that an increase from 4.2% to 5%, which is still historically low, would increase the average monthly mortgage payments by under $100.
“For buyers there still is opportunity,” says Danielle Hale, managing director of housing research for the National Association of REALTORS (NAR). “For those who are still able to get into the market, these low rates continue to be helpful.”
An upside: When rates go up, competition and prices often go down.
2. Inventory is Shrinking
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 965. 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. That means that in most areas of the country, buyers will have more homes to choose from today than they will next year.
Bottom line: Every day you wait to start looking for a new home, you’ll face fierce competition with other buyers vying for the same fewer homes.
3. Home Prices Are Still Rising
Statewide, the quarterly reports also indicate the average sale price of an existing single-family home increased to $311,062 in the first quarter of 2017. That’s up 8.7% from $286,099 in the first quarter 2016. Now looking at the same first quarter comparisons for our Hernando County Association of REALTORS MLS, the average home sale price was up by nearly 20% to $158,296 in 2017 compared to $132,308 in 2016.
Bottom line: Every day you wait to start looking for a new home, you’ll face fierce competition with other buyers vying for the same fewer homes and you’ll probably be paying more!
We hope you found this post to be helpful, informative and interesting … Watch for our next blog on June 29th.
If you are interested in staying on top of up-to-date Hernando County market conditions, be sure to visit https://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!