Still waiting to list your home for sale? If you’re on the fence about putting your home on the Richmond market, here are 3 reasons why now is the time to make a move. Buyers are out there, ready and looking in Richmond now.
- If the housing market were a sport, spring would be the playoffs. Most buyers know this and wait to seriously shop until the beginning of the season with hopes of beating the rush. In addition, the winter weather forced many buyers to put their searches on hold which means the market is bursting with potential buyers competing for the limited number of available homes.
- The floodgates haven’t opened…yet. For the moment supply is limited and buyers are competitively seeking homes, but that will change the deeper we get into the spring season. Housing inventory always increases during the warmer months. With the market heating up many homeowners who were unable to sell over the past few years after finding themselves “upside down” on their mortgages are in a rush to jump back in the ring. Once the floodgates open, you’ll be competing against other sellers in your area for potential buyers.
- There will never be a better time to Move-Up. If you are moving up to a larger, more expensive home, consider doing it now. Prices are projected to appreciate by approximately 4% this year and 8% by the end of 2015. If you are moving to a higher priced home, it will wind-up costing you more in raw dollars (both in down payment and mortgage payment) if you wait. You can also lock-in your 30 year housing expense with an interest rate at about 4.5% right now. Freddie Mac projects rates to be 5.1% by this time next year and 5.7% by the fourth quarter of 2015. Moving up to a new home will be less expensive this spring than later this year or next year.(#3 source: www.keepingcurrentmatters.com)
Home Price Expectation Survey
Every quarter, Pulsenomics surveys a nationwide panel of over one hundred economists, real estate experts and investment & market strategists about where prices are headed over the next five years. They then average the projections of all 100+ experts into a single number. Here are the results as released in March, 2014.
- Home values will appreciate by 4.5% in 2014.
- The average annual appreciation will be 3.94% over the next 5 years
- The cumulative appreciation will be 19.7% by 2018.
- Even the experts making up the most bearish quartile of the survey still are projecting a cumulative appreciation of almost 11% by 2018.