The real estate market is a challenge for today’s buyers. The current market is imbalanced and is in favor of the sellers. This is due to the historically low rates, and low inventory. This causes the buyer many challenges, including few or no contingencies, releasing earnest money immediately to the sellers, and fast-rising rates.
Why are time and money an important part? The combination of low inventory and rates with rising home prices is setting the stage for a battle between demand and supply causing homebuyers’ time and money to become very important. Hopefully, the incremental mortgage rate increase can help balance out the housing market.
According to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, there was a 19.2% year-over-year increase in home prices across the nation in January 2022. The 20-city composite saw rises as follows with the highest in Phoenix at 32.6%, Tampa at 30.8%, and Miami at 29.1%.
In this market, homebuyers need to get creative about how to purchase. It might start to take more time to secure a home to purchase because of multiple bids. A buyer might want to consider getting a short-term rental or temporary housing in order to make sure they have enough time during the home purchasing process. This leads up to having to spend more money. More time to purchase equals more expense.
