These days, buyers are having a really hard time finding houses. There are too few houses on the market.
Today, it is not newly built houses, but we are going to find out why existing houses are not on the market, that is, why sellers do not sell houses.
The first reason is mortgage interest rates.
According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the average mortgage interest rate for current homeowners is 3.8%, as shown in the table below. On the other hand, interest rates on new mortgages these days easily exceed 6%. Even if you sold your current home and bought a new home for the same price, the difference in your monthly mortgage would be over $500. (If the house price is $400,000, 20% down).
Because of this, of course, it is not a situation where sellers who are paying this low interest rate mortgage can think of selling their home and buying another home.
The second is that finding a new home to move to after selling is very difficult. The first reason is that even if you can buy and sell a house without worrying about a mortgage, it is difficult to find a house to move to right away because there are so few houses on the market, so sellers are more and more unable to put their houses on the market.
To be honest, I don't know where the knot should be untied. However, overall, it seems difficult for many houses to appear on the market until there is an overall movement in the market, such as an increase in the number of buyers due to a drop in interest rates and sellers moving to meet the demand. If you are planning to sell a house in the spring market of 2022, we recommend that you set up a strategy according to the current market situation.
If you have any additional questions about today's article, please feel free to contact us. See you next time with a more helpful article.
