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<\/p>\nMarch started out as a strong month for the U.S. housing market. However, by the second half of the month, the first indications that the coronavirus pandemic would weigh on home-selling activity began to emerge according to a report from Realtor.com.<\/p>\n
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In the weeks ending March 21 and March 28, the number of newly listed properties also fell materially. This is a solid indication that home sellers are starting to hold off on listing their properties right now. The pace of home-price growth also slowed notably in the latter half of the month according to the Realtor.com report. It represented the slowest pace of listing price growth since Realtor.com started tracking this data in 2013.<\/p>\n
Mortgage applications were another sign that home sales will slump this spring. The volume of mortgage applications for loans used to purchase homes was down 24% compared with a year ago for the week ending March 27, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. That\u2019s despite mortgage rates being near historic lows.<\/p>\n
Before the coronavirus pandemic flared up, the U.S. housing market was on solid footing. While the number of homes for sale remained relatively low, demand among buyers was still quite high. Low mortgage rates had fueled an early start to the spring home-buying season.<\/p>\n
While we don\u2019t know how much the market will be impacted by the coronavirus, we do have the financial crisis of 2007-2009 as an indicator. By 2008, sales of existing homes had fallen by over 40% from their peak in 2005. In 2005, there were over 7 million sales of existing homes. In 2008, that number was just over 4 million.<\/p>\n
Since then, we have not approached 7 million existing home sales per year again. Rather, we have averaged around 5.5 million per year since 2016. If we were to dip again to 2008 levels, existing home sales would drop by around 25% this year.<\/p>\n
Whether we see a 25% drop or even a 40% drop in real estate sales, I take solace in the fact that there will still be a liquid market. Millions of existing homes will continue to sell in the United States. It just becomes more critical that you use the right partners to get transactions done as effectively as possible. As always, our team is here to help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March started out as a strong month for the U.S. housing market. However, by the second half of the month, the first indications that the coronavirus pandemic would weigh on home-selling activity began to emerge according to a report from Realtor.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,26,1],"tags":[7,9,16,15,20,19,6,17],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-home-buying","category-home-selling","category-real-estate","tag-bradenton","tag-lakewood-ranch","tag-manatee-county","tag-real-estate","tag-real-estate-agent","tag-realtor","tag-sarasota","tag-sarasota-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1631,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/1631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgettbyzewski.com\/real-estate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}