Home prices posted a year-over-year median price increase of 15%, bringing the median home listing price to $370,000, according to Realtor.com’s Monthly Housing Trends report. One Silicon Valley home received 76 all-cash offers, another fixer-upper in Maryland received 88, 75 of which were cash offers. Metros with the fastest rising listing prices include Austin, TX with prices 40% higher; Buffalo, NY with prices up 28.2%; and Los Angeles with a 24.8% increase. Still, homes are selling faster today than one year ago, reports Forbes. Realtor.com’s senior economist does predict more homes coming to market this summer as vaccination rates increase.
The news gets even worse when you dig a bit deeper. Consider that nationally, the number of homes for sale in March decreased by 52% compared to March 2020. That’s even lower than this past February when inventory fell 48.6%. Crunch the numbers and that means there were 534,000 fewer homes for sale in March 2021 compared to March 2020 as we were just beginning the pandemic.
Since Austin is the best market in the country it’s no surprise inventory declined there 72.7% from last March. Other metros with strong declines included Jacksonville, Florida down almost 71%, and Raleigh, North Carolina where homes for sale fell 70.3%.
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