What motivates owners to sell?

With low inventory impacting the housing market, realtor.com® sought out potential home sellers to find their top reasons for selling. Most agents and homebuyers are hoping for more houses to hit the market in 2017, which is just around the corner.

The most popular motivation for moving, one that 42 percent of potential sellers choose, is that they want a different neighborhood. Twenty-one percent said their motivation for selling was the need for a bigger home, while the same percentage cited a need for a home with different features.

Meanwhile, 19 percent said they need a smaller home, and the same percentage reported they were seeking a location with better views, weather and/or lifestyle. Another 19 percent said they were looking to lower their cost of living, and 15 percent said they were planning to retire, or just had.

However, just because sellers have reasons to put their homes on the market doesn’t mean they actually will.  According to realtor.com®, many would-be sellers are hesitant to put their homes on the market until they find their next home. Once again,thanks to the lack of inventory on the market, it’s causing quite the dire inventory situation.

“The lack of housing inventory is the chicken-or-the egg dilemma: Buyers can’t find a home because there aren’t enough on the market, which is also driving up prices, but sellers, while motivated by the higher prices can’t sell because they are afraid they’ll end up homeless.  Meanwhile, new home construction is growing, but not enough to ease the logjam,” wrote Jonathan Smoke, realtor.com®’s chief economist.