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May 01, 2017 at 09:43 AM
As the spring homebuying and selling season gets into full swing, real estate brokerage firm Redfin reports that sellers’ confidence in being able to find a buyer has picked up significantly since the start of the year.
At the same time, BMO Harris Bank reports a big increase in the number of Americans who plan to buy a home in the next five years.
Redfin said 25% of respondents in a recent national survey who reported that their home was currently listed for sale or that they were planning to list in the coming year ranked “none” as their most common response when asked to select their top three concerns about selling.
In a similar survey conducted in January, this response was the eighth-most common, with 16% of sellers choosing it, according to Redfin.
Moreover, the number of sellers in the new poll who expressed concern about finding another home to buy fell from 24% in January to 18%.
“Despite strong sentiment among current home sellers, the numbers show prospective sellers have been very slow to list their homes,” Redfin chief economist Nela Richardson said in a statement.
“New listings dropped 2.3% in the first three months of the year compared to the same period last year.”
Richardson said would-be sellers were likely waiting for prices to peak, trying to time the market to capture the largest possible gain.
“Whether the confidence of the current cohort of sellers translates into more new listings in the coming months is the number one question that determines whether 2017 will be a good year or a great year,” she said.
Redfin’s survey was conducted in mid-April, and includes responses from 896 homeowners in 38 states and Washington, D.C. Of this group of respondents, 179 either said their home was currently listed for sale or would be within the next year.
Several other findings underscored sellers’ high level of confidence this spring.
Twenty-one percent of sellers said they would price high since negotiations were inevitable, up from 15% in January. Still, 51% said they would price in the mid-range based on comparable sales in their neighborhood, down from 54%.
When asked about the balance of power in their market, 20% said sellers had all the power, up from 13.1% in January, while 41% said sellers had a little more power than buyers, up from 36%.
