BUFFALO, N.Y. — With winter almost in the rearview mirror, buyers and sellers are heading into the spring housing market tonight with mixed signals.
“I've been seeing a lot more houses hit the market,” said Falesteen Ali, buyer specialist at HUNT Real Estate. “Our inventory is kind of back up, speeding back up. The spring market’s here, so I don't think that the buyers are going to have a hard time this spring finding a house.”
Those on the frontlines like Ali are saying now is the time to hit the market, but the numbers are telling most buyers and sellers to think otherwise, with mortgage rates soaring from 2% to 7% in the past year and application numbers down 4% in just the last week.
Still, realtors are betting big on spring’s historic upward trend to cause the market to bloom
“In the wintertime, everybody wants to stay where they're at,” said Alexis Burgos, realtor at HUNT Real Estate. “They're not really looking to do all that moving around, packing up, moving in and out of houses so a lot of people, they do wait until the spring to start moving around.”
Realtors also pointed to the last three months for reason to be optimistic tonight, with the sales of previously owned homes jumping 14.5% and a continued month-to-month increase since December of pending home sales, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Those trends have opened the door for positive growth in the market’s near future.
“These numbers are just going to always increase and decrease,” Ali said. “I wouldn't wait until the market crashes or the market drops or the interest rates drop because there's no such thing as the perfect time to buy a house.”
Additional data will be released next week regarding existing home sales, which will give those in the industry a better sense of where the market is right now.