Archive for September 2024
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Would You Sell Your Home If You Do Not Know What You Will Buy? |
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![]() For most folks, the answer is no... ...they would not sell their home if they do not yet know what they will buy. And, since there are still currently more buyers in the market than sellers... it likely makes sense to ensure you have a solid plan for what you will buy before you start down the path to selling. Otherwise... we might get your house on the market, get excited about quite a few showings, be thrilled about receiving several offers with highly favorable terms... only to realize that you aren't actually ready to commit to selling your home if you don't have a new home to purchase. So... if you're ready to move from one house to the next... let's make sure we're confident that we can sell your current home... but we might need to start by focusing on what you will buy... before starting the process of selling your current home. | |
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Can Your Current Home Grow With You? |
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![]() I'd love for mortgage interest rates to not be the sub-text for most real estate conversations, but it's the world we live in right now. 30 year fixed mortgage interest rates were below 4% from May 2019 through March 2022. During that time, lots of folks bought homes, and lots of folks refinanced their mortgages to get to pretty low mortgage interest rates. Thus, many homeowners (with low mortgage interest rates) find themselves considering whether their current home can grow with them as their needs change. If you need another bedroom in your home (as your family grows, or as you start working from home) you could either... 1. Sell your home and buy a new, larger home. 2. Reconfigure our renovate your current home to get the extra space that you need. Given that most homeowners have super low mortgage interest rates, many such homeowners are leaning heavily into the second option -- staying and trying to allow your home to grow with your needs. But... it isn't always possible. Some homes just don't have the right amount of space, or the right space in the right space, to allow them to grow to fit your growing needs. And thus, some homeowners find themselves concluding that as much as they would like to stay in their home and keep their mortgage interest rate - they need to get to a new house to have a space that works for them for years to come. | |
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Lower Mortgage Interest Rates Will Likely Bring More Buyers Into The Market But Maybe Not More Sellers |
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![]() As noted yesterday... August 2023 & 2024 = higher mortgage interest rates, fewer contracts signed August 2022 = lower mortgage interest rates, higher contracts signed What's the connection? The higher the mortgage interest rates... 1. The fewer buyers who can and are willing to buy. ...but also... 2. The fewer sellers who are willing to sell and give up their (likely) low mortgage interest rate on their current home. So... if or when or as mortgage interest rates decline... will we see higher levels of contract activity? Maybe. Maybe not. As mortgage interest rates decline... 1. More buyers will be able and willing to buy. ...but... 2. Sellers might still be reluctant to sell, as lower mortgage interest rates won't necessarily be lower than their locked in mortgage interest rates. Thus, I suspect as mortgage interest rates decline, we'll see the pool of would be buyers expanding more quickly than the pool of would be sellers. | |
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An Early Look At August Contract Activity |
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![]() August 2024 was another busy month of buyers and sellers signing contracts to buy and sell homes. While 109 buyers and sellers signed contracts last August (2023) we saw about the same number (107) sign contracts this August (2024). Looking in a slightly longer context, both of these months of August are a good bit below the 140 contracts signed in August 2022. For a bit more context, here is the average 30 year fixed mortgage interest rate at the start of August for each of the past three years... August 2024 = 6.73% August 2023 = 6.90% August 2022 = 4.99% I think it is very reasonable to conclude that the lower numbers of sellers being willing to sell and buyers being willing to buy in August 2023 and 2024 are related to the higher mortgage interest rate during those years. | |
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Scott Rogers
Funkhouser Real
Estate Group
540-578-0102
scott@funkhousergroup.com
Licensed in the
Commonwealth of Virginia
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