Anyone looking to sell their house will be happy to hear the latest on the housing market, which is picking up speed as the summer buying season arrives. Existing home sales in March were up 1.5 percent from the same time last year, and total sales were a little more than five percent higher than in February 2016. The Northeast saw a solid jump of 11.1 percent increase in existing home sales with the Midwest right behind at 9.8 percent.
New house under construction. © Steven Pavlov, via Wikimedia Commons
Buyers this summer will need to be on their toes. In March, homes were on the market about 75 days (two weeks less than homes for sale in March of last year). Buyers in April had to wait even less time before homes were under contract. The median time for a home to go from being listed on the market to under contract was only 68 days, an improvement of five days from the same time in 2015.
Strong housing demand suggests that prices would also be moving north – and they have. The median listing price last month was $245,000, a nine percent increase from the previous year and two percent than in March 2016.
The housing market’s strength is helping cities like Las Vegas that were hit hard by the economic downturn in the late 2000s. In the first quarter of 2009, there were nearly 18,000 default notices filed against homeowners; that is in stark contrast to the 1,800 filed in the first three months of 2016. Home values, while far below their peak, are improving. In February, the median home valued was about $201,000, a nine percent bump from that of February 2015. Builder home sales are still well below the glory numbers of the 90’s: 17,900 homes were sold in 1995. Last year’s 6,800 builder home sales was nowhere close to what we saw in the mid-1990s, but it was a 13 percent improvement from 2014.
If the last two months are any indication, the summer buying season should be a good one. Home price gains in March were the highest since 2007, according to Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at RealtyTrac. Homes sold for an average of $30,500 more than their initial listing price- a 17 percent boost to sellers.
How do you see the housing market doing this summer? Let us know in the comments.
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