Listings under contract continue to accumulate as buyers sign up for the diminishing supply of homes for sale:
Note how 2020 followed a very similar track to 2018 until mid-March. Contract activity fell sharply but stabilized during April and then recovered all the lost ground and more over May and June.
It is very unusual for us to see almost 14,000 listings under contract at this point in the year. It did happen between 2009 and 2013 but that was caused by the large number of short sales that stayed under contract for many months awaiting lender approval.
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The SIR Ninja Facebook meeting with SIR president Phillip White had one particularly interesting takeaway for me - that what we're experiencing in our local market is being mirrored nationally - brisk post-lockdown sales activity coupled with little inventory. A national housing shortage.
Catch-22 - a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.
This is what's happening. The solution to the inventory problem is more listings, however, chances are many would-be sellers feel stuck because there's nowhere to go.
Actionable: 'Move-up' sellers in this situation...it might be worth a serious exploratory conversation especially if you'll be needing financing on the next purchase. The 3% versus the 5 to 6% interest rate we thought was so good about 12 years ago gives buyers about 30% more buying power today. Maybe more, if you get to retire a higher interest rate on their current mortgage in the process.
This is huge. And while the FED is signaling these rates aren't going away any time soon, the feeding frenzy in our market doesn't look like it's going away any time soon either!
Your favorite mortgage rep may be of help laying out sale / purchase scenarios to help motivate that seller who, again, might like to move if they could see that it's worth getting into this highly competitive, high stakes game of Monopoly we're in.
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