Home sellers asking more as demand for housing soars

“It’s difficult to imagine that the housing market will be able to sustain the frenzied demand we are currently experiencing, but we have yet to see any signs of slowing. Buyer traffic on Realtor.com is outpacing the record levels we saw earlier this year, suggesting that demand will continue to exceed the number of available homes for sale.”

With housing inventories at record lows, home sellers are asking more for their properties.

Median home sale listing prices in August grew by 10% nationally in August — the largest such increase in 15 years according to Realtor.com

While housing activity typically begins to cool in late summer and fall, there’s no sign of a slowdown in the fastpaced homebuying market that’s fueled by record low mortgage rates.

“It’s difficult to imagine that the housing market will be able to sustain the frenzied demand we are currently experiencing,

Danielle Hale Realtor.com, chief economist

but we have yet to see any signs of slowing,” Realtor.com chief economist Danielle Hale said in the new report. “Buyer traffic on Realtor.com is outpacing the record levels we saw earlier this year, suggesting that demand will continue to exceed the number of available homes for sale.”

“Although demand is much more intense than it normally is this late into a buying season, the typical home asking price has likely peaked for the year at $350,000,” she said. “However, given the strong demand, sellers will remain in the driver’s seat for the foreseeable future.”

The surge in buying and fewer sellers during the pandemic has dropped home sales inventories in the DFW area by more than 40% from August 2019, Realtor.com reports.

Homes sold in the area last month were on the market for a median of 46 days.

But local real estate agents report many properties are going under contract the day they hit the market and have multiple offers.

In July, North Texas home sales hit a record onemonth total — up 25% from a year earlier.

And the median price of singlefamily homes sold by area real estate agents was 9% higher than in July 2019.

On the national level, the biggest increases in home asking prices in August were in northeast and Midwestern markets, including Philadelphia (up 18.6%), Cincinnati (up 17.8%) and Boston (up 14.7%). Miami was the only major U.S. market that saw a slight decline in home asking prices. Among Texas markets, the largest increase in listing prices was in the Austin area where sellers were asking 10.7% more than last year.