Homes are selling at record pace, sellers are getting asking price

The need for a bigger home and the desire to be closer to friends and family during the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with low interest rates on stocks and mortgages, have spurred a record pace of home sales over the past year, according to a new survey from the National Association of Realtors reveals.

According to NAR, U.S. homes listed between July 2020 and June 2021 typically sold out within a week, a record high. Homebuyers during the period typically bought their home for 100% of the seller’s asking price, the highest median since 2002, and about 35% of survey respondents bought their home above the price. demand. Sellers said they sold their homes for a median price of $ 85,000 more than their purchase price, a jump from $ 66,000 last year.

About 46% of respondents bought a larger house, while 28% bought a house of the same size.

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On average, buyers said the process of finding a home to buy takes eight weeks, unchanged from last year. About 41% of home buyers searched for properties online first, while 19% said the first step was to contact an agent.

About 87% of buyers bought their home through an agent or broker, while 7% bought directly from a builder or builder’s agent. Among home sellers, 90% of respondents worked with an agent to sell their homes, compared to 7% who were sell-by-owner sellers and less than 1% sold through an iBuyer or instant buyer.

About 29% of first-time home buyers said saving for a down payment turned out to be the most difficult part of the entire buying process. About 28% of first-time homebuyers surveyed said they used a gift or loan from friends or family to make a down payment. For regular buyers, 56% said they used the equity generated by the sale of a primary residence for their down payment.

The typical down payment was 7% for first-time home buyers and 17% for repeat buyers.

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Homebuyers looking to relocate this year were also found to have a shorter occupancy in the current home than in the previous year, with the home’s tenure increasing from 10 to eight years, the biggest change in one. year since NAR began collecting such data. .

In general, buyers said they expected to live in their home for a median of 12 years, while 18% said they would never move. Historically, the house has been occupied for six to seven years, but has increased from nine to ten years after the Great Recession.

This year, the typical first-time buyer was 33 years old, as in the previous year, while the typical age of repeat buyers reached an all-time high of 56 years. About 60% of recent buyers during the period were married, up from a high of 81% in 1985. However, the share of buyers of single women fell to 19% from a low of 15% in 2014. Shares of single and single male buyers remained at 9%, respectively.