Home Prices Increasing in the U.S.

Compared to any other time, homes are getting sold at a much faster rate today. A typical house gets sold in a matter of 23 days.

During the four weeks, the key housing market showed a result for 400+ U.S. metro areas.

A point here to keep in mind is that at the same time, the previous year, home buying and selling faced a temporary pause because of the pandemic stay-at-home orders. This is the reason why while selecting housing metrics, the comparisons made on a yearly basis are very difficult.

However, the data has been divided into two sections. The first section shows metrics that can be compared with the same period in 2020. The second section talks about the metrics compared with the same period in 2019 as these can’t be compared with the same period in 2020.

Metrics that can be compared with the same period in 2020:

• There was an all-time high in the median home sale prices, as these increased 17% year over year to $341,250. An all-time high of $353,750 was reached by asking prices.
• During this period, homes sold had a median period of 23 days on the market. This was considered the shortest time since 2012. When compared with the same period in 2020, this was 15 days less.
• Out of the houses sold, 43% were sold for more than their list price. This was pushing the bar to a new high. It was a hike of 17% points when compared with the same period a year ago.
• Is average sale to list price ratio that is the measure of how close the houses that are sold are to their asking prices. This increased 2.1% points year over year. This resulted in an all-time high of 100.7%. It reflects that the average home sold 0.7% more than what its asking price was.
• Out of all the homes that were under contract, 59% of homes got an offer within the first two weeks when these were on the market. This is an all-time new record.
• Out of all the homes that were under a contract received an offer in the time span of one week after coming on the market reflected an all-time high.

Metrics that can be compared with 2019:

• There was an increase of 22% in pending home sales compared to the same period in 2019.
• A decline with 13% was captured in new listings of homes for sale compared with the same period in 2019.
• A decrease of 47% was found in active listings (the number of homes listed for sale at any period). This was a never-seen-low.

The latest decline in new listings may be attributed to the Easter holiday because there were many Americans who were spending their time with their families rather than putting their homes on the market. It has been reported that the overall lack of homes for sale is not allowing the analysts to understand the growth of the home sales.

On the contrary, there is an increase in the homebuyer demand index of 4.3% compared to the previous month. This clearly reflects that people looking for houses are still out there and amidst the situation in the market. These people are very happy about the low mortgage rates. The rates are again going back down to almost 3%. This results in bidding up the prices of the homes that are able to come on the market. After Easter, it is a happy time for the people to find so many homes listed on the market now.