Low inventory a hurdle to home buying

Limited supply gives sellers ‘edge’

Anyone eager to buy a home this spring probably has reasons to feel good. The job market is solid. Average pay is rising. And mortgage rates, even after edging up of late, are still near historic lows.

And then there’s the bad news: Just try to find a house.

The national supply of homes for sale hasn’t been this thin in nearly 20 years. The outlook isn’t as dire in South Florida, though inventory levels are tight, especially in Broward County, where the number of forsale homes is down 28 percent from 2012, according to the Trulia real estate website.

Over the past year, the steepest drop in the national home supply has occurred among homes that are typically most affordable for first-time buyers and in markets where prices have risen sharply.

In markets like San Diego, Boston and Seattle, competition for a dwindling supply has escalated along with pressure to offer more money and accept less favorable terms.

“Sellers will have the edge again this year,” said Ralph McLaughlin, chief economist for Trulia, a real estate data provider. “Homebuyers are really going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as housing choice is concerned.”

Howard Elfman, a broker associate for Douglas Elliman in Fort Lauderdale, said there are plenty of homes for sale priced at $1 million or more. But quality homes in affordable price ranges — $300,000 and under — are hard to find, forcing buyers to settle or to pour money into renovations, Elfman said.

“[Buyers] may have an expectation of what their new home will be like, but many of them won’t get it,” he said. “They’ll have to create it. If they want impact windows, they’ll have to do it themselves. If they want a new kitchen, they’ll have to do it themselves.”

Coral Springs is an especially desirable area, but listings there are limited, said Dean Ehrlich, an agent for Re/Max ParkCreek.

Ehrlich said he has three Coral Springs listings that all are in demand even though one of the homes backs up to a road and the other two don’t have highend upgrades or finishes.

“If I get a listing in Coral Springs between $300,000 and $400,000, I can almost guarantee we will have multiple offers and get into a bidding war,” Ehrlich said.

Terry Story, an agent for Coldwell Banker in southern Palm Beach County, said she had bidding wars on two new listings within the past two weeks. Both were in Boca Raton and both were on the market for less than $500,000.

“They were worth every penny we were asking for,” Story said.

About 1.75 million homes were for sale nationally at the end of February, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s down 6.4 percent from a year earlier and only slightly up from January, when listings reached their lowest point since the association began tracking them in 1999. All told, the supply of homes for sale has fallen on an annual basis for the past 21 months.

Among the factors that have fueled the decline in homes for sale:

• Since 2008, the average time homeowners have stayed in their houses before selling has doubled to nearly eight years, according to Attom Data Solutions.

• Many homeowners aren’t selling for fear they wouldn’t find a new home they would like and could afford. Some who had locked in ultra-low fixed mortgage rates may be reluctant to take on a new loan at a higher rate. Others may wish to sell but can’t because they own one of the 3.2 million homes worth less than what’s owed on