The market tides are beginning to turn against home sellers, especially in two US states that saw a number of people flocking there during the COVID-19 years.
Those looking to purchase property in parts of Texas and Florida are at last in luck. The residential market is finally beginning to cool as recently constructed homes list for sale and help saturate the markets, meaning lower prices.
The states are “starting to get into a buyer’s market” Rick Palacios Jr., director of research at John Burns Research & Consulting, told the Wall Street Journal this month.
The trend, however, is only currently occurring in select areas within the Lone Star and Sunshine states, and is, for now, far from a national phenomenon.
As well, it only offers cold comfort in a prohibitively priced market, especially considering that during the year’s first quarter, prices of single-family homes rose in 93% of US metro areas.
Still, recent home building has paid off in certain cities across Texas and Florida, which accounted for over a quarter of the US’s single-family building permits in 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023, according data from the Census Bureau.
In April, the number of homes on the market was higher than the pre-pandemic average in 10 metro areas across the two states, including Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Tampa, according to Realtor.com.
Across America, though, the number of active listings this April was down 36% from normal pre-pandemic amounts.
“Buyers do have a little bit more leverage” this spring when it comes to haggling down asking prices, Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS told the Journal, but “we’re still pretty far from being a balanced market.”
Indeed, the numbers aren’t nearly as hopeful for would-be buyers in major East Coast cities including New York, Philadelphia and Boston, where the number of active listings has been nearly or more than halved compared to the pre-pandemic norm.
In addition to more homes being for sale, soaring mortgage rates have also hurt housing costs in, again, only select cities.