We are back to peak pricing!
But it sure doesn’t seem like a good time to sell your house, and as a result, most potential sellers will pack it in and wait until The Home-Selling Season of 2024.
Is there anything wrong with waiting until next year?
- Mortgage rates could go higher. The Fed meets three more times this year, and unfortunately they will be tempted to bump their rate at least once or twice. It doesn’t mean that mortgage rates will definitely go higher, but lenders are like gas stations and use any reason to pinch extra profit.
- Flood of Inventory. By a ‘flood’ , I mean two or three other homes go up for sale nearby.
- Bad Comps. If you have any 4Q sales nearby, they are likely to be lower than you’d like.
Who will be the 2024 home sellers?
There has to be a load of realtors and mortgage brokers who had their worst year ever in 2023, and had already been thinking of moving down and/or out. Or what about those sellers who sat out during covid? How about those who saw the market collapse after rates doubled in the second half of 2022 and they gave up their hopes of selling in 2023? They thought it would take years before we got back to peak pricing. Well, here we are!
We are so overdue for more listings. Look at the recent history:
Remember the 10% covid drop in 2020 and we thought the world was going to end?
I’ll go out on a limb and guess that we’ll have 2,500 next year, and it will feel like a flood!
I checked my stats for the last two years. I’ve had 29 listings sell that averaged nine days on the market, with a median of 4 days. I’ll get you down the road before Thanksgiving!
> I’ll go out on a limb and guess that we’ll have 2,500 next year, and it will feel like a flood!
Sounds like a contest! Just in time for the ALCS Padres run.
My guess: 2980 NSDCC listings Jan 1- Aug 31.
Why so high? Desperate brokerages will be willing to hold unrealistic sales prices just to stay in the game.
I’ll go 2499, (just kidding). I’d guess 2222.
JtR- what would you advise for those who want to sell a home that they have leased currently? Would you list while occupied or wait until it was empty? Maybe this could be another post.
Would you list while occupied or wait until it was empty?
Never ever list a home that is tenant-occupied. I always wait until vacant.
Even though the tenants might be friendly about the idea in the beginning, it always goes bad once realtors want to barge in with little or no notice. Tenants won’t do much to make the home show ready, and then once they get ticked off, they will leave their junk lying all over the place. Then the listing gets suspended for a month or two while you wait for them to leave – maybe with your cash-for-keys – and then you have to try to re-ignite the urgency which is near impossible.
It’s not worth taking the chance.
Why so high? Desperate brokerages will be willing to hold unrealistic sales prices just to stay in the game.
In that package, there would also be several re-list/refresh listings too, which runs up the count.
“There has to be a load of realtors and mortgage brokers who had their worst year ever in 2023, and had already been thinking of moving down and/or out.”
This reminds me of 2007, when we could identify these folks by the magnetic Dominos Pizza delivery pyramids on their Beemers and Benzes.