The spring selling season is upon us, despite the still-chilly temps. Here at EveryHome, we’ve seen a large number of new listings, as well as a number of clients who are currently preparing their homes to list in March and April.
Similarly, buyers have been coming out of the woodwork since the Superbowl weekend, and we’ve enjoyed a number of listings sell in under 3 days recently. We expect the local inventory of homes for sale to increase considerably in the next couple of weeks. Typically, the number of springtime listings reach their peak in early April.
Mortgage rates had been on the decline for nearly two months, but the most recent report from Freddie Mac revealed that rates were stabilizing and even beginning to inch a bit higher. However, these rates still remain well under 4% and allow for greater home buying affordability.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home rose about 2% in the past week, and are a staggering 27% higher than this time last year. This indicates strong buyer activity, and means that we can expect to see a lot of settlements in the upcoming month or two.
Recent headlines have reported that national new construction home sales dropped sharply in January, but a closer look at that data reveals that the majority of this decrease occurred in the West. Here in the Northeast, new home sales have remained stable – in fact, new home sales have actually risen 3.4% in January, despite the big blizzard. Experts are quick to point out that despite this overall national decrease in new home sales, the housing recovery remains intact.
And here’s some good news: A recent study has found that most homeowners have actually underestimated the value of their home and weren’t aware of how much their home value increased since the recession. The survey, based on the responses of 1,000 borrowers and conducted by Omniweb, reported that many homeowners guessed that their property’s value increased between 1 and 5 percent since 2013. In reality, however, home values across the nation surged 10 percent since 2013. Good news for many people who may be planning to sell in the spring!