What to expect in real estate this summer

With the year halfway over, what is up next for real estate in 2015?

Laura from Realty Biz News has five predictions on what will be in store for real estate over the next few months.

1. Throughout the year, home prices have continued to rise. In January 2015, the average home price rose by 5.7 percent over 2014 listed prices. With the rise of home prices, local markets across Texas, Wyoming, New York and Colorado have continued to exceed expectations.
2. Mortgage rates have continued to remain low. Buyers are able to afford the higher-priced homes due to lower mortgage rates. If you are working with clients whom are interested in purchasing homes, make sure that they have a quoted mortgage rate before they begin to look at homes. Nothing is worse in a hot market than clients seeing the home of their dreams and realizing that they haven’t been approved for the loan or mortgage.
3. The seller is still reigning king in the real estate market. By the end of February 2015, housing inventory had risen to 1.89 million existing homes for sale. To date, unsold inventory is hovering around a 4.6 month supply, which gives sellers a bit of an advantage in the current market. A shorter month supply allows sellers to wait for the best offers – rather than accepting the first offer that comes through the door.
4. Buyers are grabbing any move-in ready home. Throughout 2015, buyers have consistently shown that they don’t want to purchase “fixer-up” homes. They want to buy something that is ready to move-in and can meet all of their real estate requirements.
5. Throughout the country, it is significantly cheaper to buy than it is to rent. In fact, according to Zillow, the average U.S. renter will spend 30 percent of their income on annual rent, while the average home owner will spend just 15 percent of their income on annual mortgage payments. With this knowledge in mind, property managers can play to the strengths of the market by pricing the annual rent at a cost that is slightly above the annual mortgage payments. Through the latter tactic, the properties can remain rented, the owners can continue to earn an income, and renters will be happy to “have found a rental deal.”