As the spring buying season nears, buyers will be in for one of the most competitive housing markets in years. Redfin reported that the median home sale price increased 15% year-over-year to $321,250. Meanwhile, new listings are down 17% year-over-year which could pose an issue for homebuyers listings don't improve.
As of the week ending Feb. 21, 2021, asking prices of newly listed homes hit a new all-time high of $342,961, up 11% year-over-year. Additionally, pending home sales are up 18% year-over-year but down 9% from two weeks prior, according to the report. Redfin attributed the decline to the winter storm that impacted a huge portion of the country.
Homes are also continuing to be snatched up at a high rate, as 55% of homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within the first two weeks on the market, well above the 44% rate during the same period a year ago, according to the report. Redfin revealed that this is another new all-time high for this measure since at least 2012 (as far back as the company's data for this measure goes). During the week ending Feb. 21, 57% of homes sold in two weeks or less.
"The housing market is now like a Soviet-era supermarket, with most of the shelves empty," said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman in remarks on Redfin's Q4 earnings call this week. "In the week leading up to this call, demand slackened for the first time in months, probably because of cross-country snowstorms. But prior to that, the stories we heard from our agents were harrowing, juicy and bizarre. Migrations are warping the space-time continuum of small-town economies. The affordability crisis that flowed like some huge, unspent electrical charge from San Francisco to Seattle to Portland to Denver and to Boise is now reaching virtually every town in North America, bringing dazzling prosperity but also new anxieties."
Mortgage purchase applications decreased 12% week-over-week (seasonally adjusted) and were up 7% from a year earlier (unadjusted) during the week ending Feb. 19. For the week ending Feb. 25, 30-year mortgage rates increased to 2.97%, the highest level since August.
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