The economy is taking off, the national average salary of the American worker is on the rise, and at long last the statistics show that millennials are getting hitched and having babies. That’s all good financial news, especially when it comes to the homebuying industring. Yet the pundits now says that this could be one of the worst home selling seasons in over twenty years. The guilty parties include sky high mortgage rates, the new tax bill that wipes out many former tax incentives for owning a home, and first buyers extreme reluctance to pay the inflated prices for housing that currently exist. All this is expected to put the kibosh on flourishing home sales for the foreseeable future.
The spring season is traditionally the strongest time of the year for home buyers, before summer vacations disrupt schedules and finances. March, April, May, and June are usually the busiest months for home realtors, according to the National Association of Realtors. But this year may not see that rush developing.
Lackluster sales volume due to market trends that have sent the price of an average three bedroom/two bathroom home into the stratosphere are keeping the big realtor agencies like Re/Max from being too optimistic about home sales from Easter to Labor Day. Rising interest rates are a challenge that most realtors can’t handle too well. But some experts in the housing field now say that buyers who aren’t afraid of the current high mortgage rates might be able to wrestle realtors and banks into renegotiating their interest rates after a set period of time, such as five years down the road. That could conceivably lead to a saner mortgage plan for first time homebuyers.
