What a difference 12 months makes. A year ago buyers were firmly in the driver’s seat. With lots to choose from and very little selling quickly, buyers could take their time to look at houses and spend days considering if they wanted to make an offer. Fast forward to today, where in many areas and multiple price points the buyer’s market has quickly flipped to a seller’s market.
One agent in my office was working 7 offers for clients this week – all 7 had multiple offers on them and one of those had 30+ offers! Of the offers I’ve written this year, around 75% of them were multiple offer situations. Stories like this are very common with many of the agents I’ve talked to across the entire region.
In the last few weeks I’ve been showing houses and often finding another agent showing the same house at the same time. For the last several years that has been fairly uncommon but with the tight supply of homes for sale and the surging buyer demand for that shrinking supply, I’m encountering it regularly. When setting up showings for clients recently, it isn’t unusual to see several of the homes the buyer wants to see have already been sold. The market is really moving!
It looks like the entry priced homes in most markets are the hottest right now. This is to be expected since these home owners need to sell their home before they can move up, so the demand has to start on the lower end and work itself up the price chain. With the declining inventory of foreclosures and short sales, more and more of these home sales will be traditional home sellers that can then move up the price ladder and stimulate demand for the higher priced homes.
Buyers this year need to be very proactive – if an interesting home comes on the market, see it as soon as possible. If you love the home, offer on it immediately. While you still have a chance of getting into a multiple offer situation, the fast you move the fewer competitors you’ll have. Keep in mind that once a 2nd offer comes in, your negotiation has turned into an auction.
As I said before however, this radical change is being seen the most in the lower price points. For sellers at higher prices, you still have a much more favorable selling environment today than you have had in years and I believe the market will continue to improve for you this year as well.
