This Is The Very Best Week Of The Year To Buy A House
One specific week each fall quietly tips the odds in favor of home buyers, and the reasons why reveal a stark divide opening up across the entire housing market.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
If you can afford it, the best week of the year to buy a house is from September 27 to October 3. This, of course, depends on whether you can pay cash or take on a 6.7% fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage. Many people can’t, which has triggered a major slowdown in housing sales.
“Historically, this week offers the most favorable balance of market conditions for buyers. Inventory tends to be elevated, prices typically dip below their seasonal peak, buyer competition slows, and the overall pace of the market becomes more manageable,” Realtor.com reports. Of course, for some sellers, it could signal desperation. Summer is a good time to sell a house in most parts of the country. For sellers who didn’t have luck, it could be a time to reprice and negotiate.
Supply and demand numbers compare favorably to the start of the year for home buyers. In most years, inventory is up 31.9% compared to the start of the year.
The real estate research firm says that this week, the number of buyers in the market has dipped compared to most weeks. It is simple supply and demand. High interest rates may have driven those buyers out of the market. In that case, the current situation could continue. Additionally, evidence suggests sellers have modestly dropped prices from their average of $416,000, which is near a record.
The trend isn’t uniform across the market. Low-priced home sales are moving slowly. In the first five months of the year, sales of homes priced below $300,000 dropped 10% compared with the same period a year ago. Sales of homes in the $1 million to $2 million price range were flat compared with last year. Economists often call this a “K-shaped” recovery. In this case, experts have applied it to the housing market. People with money are spending it. People without money aren’t.
The desperate seller theory is supported by one other statistic. “The best week also represents one of the peak weeks for price reductions throughout the year, with an average of 5.7% of homes seeing price reductions, historically.” Not so long ago, in many markets, sellers got more than one offer.
Rising interest rates could upend all of these conclusions. It would not be surprising if, in this interest-rate environment, mortgage rates rose to 7%. If that happened, the buyer pool would shrink.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
