New Home Sellers Join Market as High Demand Persists
The high buyer demand/rising prices drumbeat kept its rhythm into September as buyers scooped houses off the market at record rates, said Zillow, Seattle.
Although total housing inventory continues to tighten, sellers feel more comfortable listing their homes and more new listings are coming on the market than at any point since the pandemic started, Zillow reported. “Optimism is rising in both the housing market and in the economy as buyers, sellers and economists gain confidence,” the firm’s Weekly Market Report said.
Houses are still going under contract quickly in an “extended” buying season, the report said:
–Newly pending sales are up 25.5% compared to the same week last year, the highest year-over-year increase in the weekly Zillow database reaching back through 2019.
–Typical days-to-pending for houses on the market remained a lightning-fast 13 days for the fifth week in a row–14 days faster than last year and the shortest time on market going back through 2019.
New sellers are seeing the strong sales and joining the marketplace, Zillow said:
–New for-sale inventory is up 16.2% month over month and rose 17.6% since just last week, though it is still down 3.5% year over year. New for-sale inventory is at its highest level since mid-March, following yearly trends of increasing new listings to start September and suggesting that more homeowners are deciding that now is a good time to sell.
This “robust” demand is driving prices higher, Zillow said. The median sale price from the week ending July 25 equaled $281,844, or 7.8% higher than a year before. It is up 4.5% month over month.
–The median list price is $345,824, up 9.3% year over year, the highest year-over-year increase since at least January 2019. But median list prices are up only 0.2% month-over-month and saw no change from the week before, the report said. –The share of listings with a price cut is 4.2%, down 1.3 percentage points from a year ago, Zillow reported. The median price cut equaled 2.5%.
