Mary Chao
Pricing for bidding war: How this house got $370K over list
In a market with few homes, sellers are incorporating a new strategy to price a home extra low to get more bidders.
LEARN MOREHome prices are up, but it now takes longer to sell a home.
That’s the latest takeaway from Redfin, a brokerage firm and real estate website. The median home sale price was $380,250 during the four weeks that ended July 30, up 3.2% from a year earlier. That’s the biggest increase since November.
Homes that sold were on the market for a median of 27 days, up from 23 days a year earlier.
Meanwhile, house payments remain historically high due to rising mortgage interest rates that continue to climb, with a national average of 7.52% on a 30-year loan as of Sept. 6, according to Bankrate.com.
The typical U.S. homebuyer’s monthly mortgage payment was $2,605 during July, up 19% from a year earlier, according to Redfin. Home prices are increasing because the supply isn’t meeting demand as homeowners who have locked in lower mortgage rates hang on to their homes. The total number of homes for sale is down 19%, the biggest drop in a year and a half, and new listings are down 21%.
More than 9 of every 10 U.S. homeowners with mortgages have an interest rate below 6%. Rising mortgage interest rates directly impact the real estate market, Lawrence Yun, chief economist at National Association of Realtors, said in a C-Span interview.
“When interest rates rise, we always see the first sector to respond to higher interest rate is the housing sector,” Yun said. “With higher interest rates, it just means that people who consider home ownership as part of their American Dream, they’re saying goodbye to that.”
