On Thursday, the National Association of Realtors will release new data on September home sales across the country. It will give valuable information on how effective the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes over the last 6 months have been.
“[The market] is certainly more balanced in the sense that buyers can spend some time looking at houses because they know it’s going to be there for an extra day or two,” said Ryan Haarer, a real estate agent and partner at Haarer & Joseph in Denver. In Denver, home sales have fallen 74% over the last year, according to Redfin. In Phoenix, they have fallen 67%, but in Detroit, home sales have only fallen 1%.
It is a far departure from 2021 when homes were flying off the market in record time. Oftentimes, buyers would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars above the asking price just to be considered, and they would have to make an offer on the spot since homes were selling the same day they were listed.“The market changed extremely fast,” said Haarer. “That’s part a lot of the confusion right now is that we’re waiting for some sort of a trend when really people don’t know where we’re headed.