Why Did So Many Homes Sell In Our Area In 2020?


Why Did So Many Homes Sell In Our Area In 2020?
By Scott Rogers • February 18, 2021
As shown above, the annual pace of home sales took a nose dive in April 2020 related to COVID, but has taken off since August 2020 and quickly accelerated the market to a pace of almost 1,500 home sales per year. Why is this happening? Here are some of my best guesses... Pre-COVID, most of us likely spent the minority of our waking hours in our homes. We would be at work much of the time. During COVID, many folks find themselves spending 90% or more of their waking hours in their homes. For many people, this made them quickly realize that their home was no longer working for their needs or those of their family. If you're working from home and your kids are learning from home, you suddenly have higher expectations for the space and spaces that your home offers. I suspect this "being at home much more than normal" dynamic caused more people to decide to sell their home and buy a new home during 2020. Mortgage interest rates have been dropping throughout most of 2020, making it an excellent time to buy a home from a monthly mortgage payment perspective. These lower rates likely made it pretty easy for the "my home doesn't work during COVID" buyers to consider upgrading to a new home. There is an extraordinary amount of pent up buyer demand in our area. Perhaps more sellers than usual listed their homes in the second half of the year, most of which were scarfed right up by eager buyers, thus leading to higher than normal home sales. This also seems to have lead to higher sales prices! What do they say? The whole is greater than the sum of its parts? It seems that... more buyers wanting to upgrade to a new home + super low interest rates + pent up buyer demand + quickly rising home prices = a red hot real estate market in 2020! As one other aside, it is also possible that we may have seen more second home purchases in 2020 than in other comparable years. More and more people found they could work from home, or from out of town, and this likely drove at least some number of new buyers of second homes into our market. Receive Updates by Email Recent Articles: There Are Plenty Of Types Of Houses That Exist That Just Are Not Available To Purchase Home Sales By Price Range In The City Of Harrisonburg Are You Compromising On Aspects Of Your Next Home That You Can Or Cannot Change Later? How Much Slower Are The Winter Months In Our Local Housing Market? Rockingham County and New Home Sales Drive Surge in Area Housing Market Find The Balance Between Optimistic And Realistic Home Pricing Room Size Is Difficult To Understand Solely From Real Estate Photos How Much Would You Value Not Having To Prepare Your Home For Showings? One Out Of Four Homes Is Taking Longer Than A Month To Sell Consider The Cost Of Your Planned Renovations When Planning Your Offer
Have any questions? Contact Scott Rogers at 540-578-0102 or scott@funkhousergroup.com
Based on information from the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Association of REALTORS® or its MLS, for the period Jan 1, 2000 through Nov 21, 2024 (unless otherwise noted).
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