The Market Is Changing!

Yes! We are currently seeing a shift in the market and it has left a lot of people with many questions. Yes! I know buying a selling a house can be a super scary thing. SO, here’s a little update about what I see is going on in the market!

A nationwide listing site reports that 15% of sellers reduced their asking price during a 4 week period ending May 1. I can see how this could throw red flags to some, especially with what happened in 2008, but as a Realtor, I just see the market correcting itself. The market we are coming out of, we had record low interest rates that stuck around long enough for a multitude of buyers to take advantage of. This caused a VERY STRONG seller’s market and rising home prices. Now, we have higher interest rates, so the buyers have slowed, and the market is coming back down some. I pulled a report to see how many homes were for sale in April. In Jefferson County we had 432 and in Hardin County we had 125. In August, Jefferson County had 746 active listings and Hardin County had 219. In total, April had 557 and August had 965. That’s 408 more homes for sale! Supply and demand. We have more supply now and less demand, therefore prices go down.

In previous months, we were also seeing people coming in with offers removing all contingencies, multiple offers and over asking price offers. This is NOT a normal thing in the real estate world. Now we are seeing contingencies come back and fewer and fewer multiple offer situations. The market is starting to normalize!

According to Freddie Mac, “Homebuyers continue to show resilience even though rising mortgage rates are causing monthly payments to increase by about 1/3 compared to a year ago.” People are always going to need to buy and sell. People will move in and out of their state, get married, divorced, have babies, need a bigger home, or become empty nesters, retire and need to downsize, all the things. So no, I don’t believe we are headed for another 2008 home crash. We are just normalizing.