Seattle skyline panorama at sunset as seen from Kerry Park, Seattle, WA
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The Black Friday week of homebuying is fast approaching. Realtor.com crunched the numbers with a variety of data points. It’s conclusion–the week of September 22 is the best week to buy a home and get the best deal for the remainder of 2019.
“Traditionally, summer is always the busiest season. Families who follow a school year calendar need to be in their new homes by September. They also tend to look for bigger and higher price point properties,” explains realtor.com Senior Economist George Ratiu. “We found with our research that homes not sold during the summer buying season are facing price reductions as both inventory increases while Days On Market numbers are rising.”
Then you have sellers who want or need to sell and close escrow by year-end. “The week of September 22 is the Black Friday for home shoppers, Ratiu said.” A standout in the research for Ratiu was, “how quickly the market is adjusting to price cuts. It’s only mid-September and typically you don’t see price cuts and increased inventory for another month or so.”
With the Fed cutting interest rates an additional quarter of a point to the U.S. benchmark rate ranging from 1.75 to 2 percent along with inventory increases from homes that didn’t sell during the frenetic summer season, and price reductions from nervous sellers are significant to buyers. Also, nationally there is 26 percent less competition during that week according to realtor.com. This perfect storm for home buyers is fast approaching.
Realtor.com looked at 53 markets around the country and 41 showed that sweet spot of September 22 to September 28. Here’s the 411 on the competition. Buyers in the West can expect 30 percent less competition than the average week. In addition, listing prices are down 4 percent from peak pricing with 22 percent more listings on the market.
Look at several markets in the West. Seattle, where one of the country’s hottest housing markets is in rapid cool-down mode, leads the country with a 41.3% drop in competition for the week of September 22. Portland, Oregon buyers can expect a 35.5 drop in the competition that week.
Price reductions also look to finally be on the buyer’s side in some metros. Realtor.com found Denver has 11% of listings with price reductions. Salt Lake City follows at 10.8 percent of inventory with cuts while Seattle’s active listings are at a 10.2 percent reduction.
Talk about inventory increases only means good news for buyers and not so good for sellers. “With 116,000 new listings added to the national inventory, this week has 6.1 percent more listings than the average week and 76 percent more than the start of the year,” notes Ratiu. “For the patient buyer who has been waiting, this really is a good time to seriously shop and make offers,” he adds. This is especially true for the mid to upper-end homes in metro areas like Seattle and Denver.
Get out there next week and make a deal. Celebrate the holidays in your new home.