"The Battle of the Buyers", circa 2020
When the world shut down a few months ago, the housing market started to follow suit. With the warm weather coming back, and states easing lockdown restrictions, buyers are finally flooding back into the market. However, amongst the uncertainty, they're noticing a critical factor is at play; nobody is selling! This is leaving buyers to duke it out for the few listings they can find.
In the four preceding weeks to May 10, nearly half the homes selling faced bidding wars. Despite the perfect timing, sellers have yet to start listing again. The uncertainty around the pandemic is the culprit in question. Massachusetts' very own capital experienced the highest amount of bidding wars during this time. In Boston, on average, that was nearly 2 of every 3 listings.
With mortgage rates reaching record lows, and lenders easing up as federal regulators continue to work on their response to the pandemic, it's amazing that more sellers aren't coming out of the woodwork. With all this time to analyze our homes, some people want out asap, and some people are falling in love with them. We're excited to see what happens as states start to further ease pandemic measures, and the world starts to open back up, for more reasons than just real estate, but we can expect a wild couple of months once we finally reach stage 4.