Why are the high prices attracting more sellers to the market?  It's because of the HOMEBODIES! 

Hi everybody,  It’s Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee the sale of your home, or I’LL buy it! 
Ok, so every week, I share market data to keep you informed with the local real estate market.  

Here is this week’s Boca Market Watch.

First, Single Family Homes:

This past week, a  decent week with 59 new homes on the market, ranging from $250,000 to $11.9 Million. Only 21 homes back on the market, virtually nothing, while 23 homes listed took a price decrease, and 9 sellers raised their asking price.  And  a very slow week with only 37 different properties under contract, and another 30 going pending.  And only 17 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright, extremely few!   60 homes were sold in the past week, a slow week and those sales ranged from $350K to $17.9M. Now that's a spicy meatball!

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

Only 65 new listings, very low, and ranging from $80 Grand to $1.9 Million.  
28 units came back on the market, 20 properties with a price decrease, and 3 sellers with an increase, in total, not very many.  53 different properties went under contract, and 58 went pending, a so so week. And only 17 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired, very few!  118 closed sales this week, a great week, and ranging in price from $55 Grand to $3.4 M!

Here's what's making news right now.

The Homebodies are hampering the true market potential by not selling.  Who are the Homebodies? Homeowners who don’t want to give up their rock-bottom mortgage rates and seniors choosing to age in place. 

The average length of homeowner occupancy hit an all-time high of 10.6 years in May,  muting the impact of increased house-buying power and potential home sales.

Two trends are locking homebodies in place and driving the increase in tenure length.  First, for homeowners with rock-bottom rates, modestly higher rates in an historically low inventory environment may dis-incent some from selling their homes, thus preventing more supply from reaching the market. Second, seniors are choosing to age in place, rather than downsizing.

As a consequence, our inventory in May was down 47% from the year before, basically half, and it was already low to begin with!  And prices in May were up 30% over 2020 - that's just crazy!

The NAR and Fannie Mae are predicting a modest increase in listings as post-pandemic workplaces sort out the work from home scenario and mortgage forbearance programs expire. But what if prices continue to rise and rents do become more accessible?  The FED will likely see it as inflationary and will curtail its purchasing of bonds and start to raise interest rates.  That won't help the economy, in my opinion.  We'll have to see how things shake out over the next 3-6 months.

In other news, Showing Time, a service many realtors like myself use to handle the showings of listings, is reporting that the number of showings in the US took an unusual dip in May.  This is a month that would typically be one of the biggest months for activity nationally, so its significant.  Showing Time is saying that this could be evidence that the market is "adjusting and stabilizing", and that it may signify a housing market on its way back to something resembling normal. That would certainly be a welcome development, but even if demand begins to weaken, we’ll still be far from a buyer’s market since the demand for real estate remains at an unprecedented level.  We live in interesting times...