A buildup of unsold houses sitting on the market for weeks is becoming a new reality in once-booming housing areas across the Sun Belt.<\/p>\n
Real estate agents in the South and Southwest say they\u2019re seeing more people list homes, giving up on hopes that mortgage rates will drop anytime soon. In Florida, homeowners are fleeing soaring insurance costs, and in Colorado, investors are culling rental properties.<\/p>\n
The result is a rise in supply, something real estate agents who were getting multiple offers on even ho-hum houses not so long ago are not accustomed to. In Florida, houses now take a median 73 days to sell, up from 55 days two years ago and twice as long as in New Jersey and Virginia, according to Realtor.com data.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the big picture it\u2019s not horrible, but compared to what everyone was used to, it feels like molasses,\u201d said Michael Lauer, a broker in Florida\u2019s Tampa Bay area. His business remains steady, but overall sales in his county have declined about 14% and the supply of homes for sale has more than doubled in two years.<\/p>\n
A rise in supply of homes – whether sold by owners or new – is generally a good thing in the US, where low inventories since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis have contributed to render many regions unaffordable for a majority of people.<\/p>\n
An influx of people moving south during the pandemic and the lack of sellers willing to let go of cheap mortgages had exacerbated the issue and led to fierce bidding wars. Today, the supply of previously owned homes on the market nationally is still below 2019 levels, but nine states in the South and West now are above, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Drew Reading said in a June 10 note.<\/p>\n
Homebuilders who sped up production during the pandemic-era housing boom in the Sun Belt now are having to cut prices and offer steep price concessions to move excess homes.<\/p>\n
Economists call the buildup of unsold houses in once-hot areas \u201cnormalization.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cInventories have been climbing, but they\u2019ve been climbing out of a hole,\u201d said Charlie Dougherty, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co.<\/p>\n
For real estate professionals, that\u2019s hardly reassuring. While US home prices are still higher than a year ago, they\u2019re declining in cities like Dallas and Tampa, based on S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth, Texas, near Dallas, is a seller\u2019s market – for now, said Paul Epperley, president of the local Realtors association. Epperley sees some homeowners throwing in the towel on mortgage rates and listing their homes for sale. Nationwide, more than 70% of owners had mortgage rates below 5% in the first quarter, according to Redfin estimates, giving them little incentive to sell and buy elsewhere in a market with rates near 7%. However, a growing number have to move for jobs or family reasons and can\u2019t wait any longer for borrowing costs to fall.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey realize they\u2019re not going to come back down to 2.8% in the foreseeable future,\u201d Epperley said.<\/p>\n
The number of new and existing homes on the market in Colorado rose 51% in May from last year, and it\u2019s up 110% over two years, one of the biggest gains in the nation, according to Realtor.com data.<\/p>\n
One contributing factor may be a series of tenant-friendly laws recently passed in the state that has turned off landlords, according to Windy Bailey, president of the Pikes Peak Association of Realtors in Colorado Springs. She sees frustrated investors selling off their rental properties, contributing to the supply of homes on the market.<\/p>\n
In fact, investors appear to be driving at least a small part of the inventory buildup in the US. Local real estate agents in cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Phoenix recently have been wondering if institutional investors are selling off properties, according to Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. However, it\u2019s hard to quantify to what extent it\u2019s happening, Yun said.<\/p>\n
Most of the sellers are mom-and-pop investors, said David Howard of the National Rental Home Council. By contrast, big institutional homeowners are buying fewer single-family rental homes, or SFRs, but aren\u2019t yet selling them off.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of owners of SFRs are taking advantage of what is still a pretty good time to sell,\u201d said Howard, who represents institutional owners.<\/p>\n
In the Tampa Bay area, Lauer said spikes in flood and homeowners insurance are pushing people to sell lately. \u201cSome people can afford it, but just don\u2019t want to pay it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And while beautiful homes in desirable areas are still selling, the salad days of a few years ago are over.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything you listed had multiple offers immediately,\u201d Lauer said. \u201cThat\u2019s long gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A buildup of unsold houses sitting on the market for weeks is becoming a new reality in once-booming…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[64,135,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-30682","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-markets","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}