This week the National Association of Realtors reported that median existing-home sales went up at a pace of 15.4% on a year-over-year basis. The median home price for a home in January was $350,300. It was the highest median price on record for the month of January, as CNN reported.
In December, Zillow predicted that the 12-month rate of home price growth would drop by 11%, but then revised that forecast saying that 2022 would finish up 16.4%. Now the company is predicting that the year-over-year rate for growth of home prices could peak at 21.6% by May.
According to the National Association of Realtors, in 2021 around 25% of homes, that sold, had one offer, but 75% had more than one offer.
And even with the price hikes, buying a home may still be a smart move in 2022 for some. The trade publication Mortgage Reports said that buying a home could work for investors, given "how inflation will push rent prices higher."
Jess Kennedy, a co-founder and COO at Beeline said, "When you look at where the housing market is right now, you still see big gaps between available supply and demand. Until that demand is lowered due to rising rates, housing prices won’t go down."
Kennedy said, “As supply and demand come into line with one another, we will see a normalization of the market but I don’t anticipate that housing prices will come down – they just won’t continue to grow exponentially as they have in the past year. In the short term as buyers look to find a property before higher rates impact them, we could actually see home prices driven higher.”
By the end of January, for sale home inventory fell to an all-time low of 860,000, CNN reported. Which was down by 16.5% from last year.
As NAR reported, the current environment has become even tougher on first-time home buyers. These new buyers accounted for a smaller share of the market than before, at around 27% according to the REALTORS Confidence Index Survey.
The survey found that homebuying demand outpaced supply, and that caused properties to stay on the market for a shorter amount of days compared to a year ago. Last month houses averaged days on the market, compared with 21 days a year before that. The group said that 79% of property listings stayed on the market for less than a month.
