If you’ve been contemplating selling your Steamboat Springs home, if you came across last week’s USA Today article that found “home sales are slowing,” it might make you think twice. You couldn’t be faulted for jumping to the conclusion that slowing national sales means tough sledding for selling Steamboat Springs homes—but that takeaway is almost certainly wrong. The reasons are tied to the nature of the market—specifically, to this year’s Steamboat Springs market.
It is true that in some slow markets, sellers find themselves at a disadvantage. That’s the case when a sales slowdown is due to a national economic outlook that makes consumers nervous, or to financial turmoil like runaway inflation, or to other general conditions that drive down the number of eager prospects. Such conditions also increase the length of time it takes to sell a home, which drives up the number of homes being offered. In slowing markets like those, competing with others selling their own Steamboat Springs homes can mean lowering your own asking price beneath what seems fair: it’s a buyers’ market.
But in other market slowdowns, the opposite conditions prevail. Today’s national residential market looks a lot more like that! Further down in that same USA Today article are details describing a “debate about whether the culprit is rising mortgage rates or low housing supplies.” It points to the fact that “…economists largely blame low housing supplies, not rates.” The Chief Economist for mortgage titan Freddie Mac even observes, “…there’s just no inventory.” Plus, the nation’s economic outlook doesn’t at all jibe with typical buyers’ market conditions.
An even more convincing argument for homeowners currently hesitant about selling their Steamboat Springs homes is how “skimpy supplies are pushing up prices.” That’s no longer debatable—at least not on the national scene: last month, the median price of an existing house was up 5.3% over last year.
In short, it’s pretty clear that this year’s version of a slowing market equals a sellers’ market. I’m standing by to help demonstrate all the ways that this can turn out to be a market that’s just about perfect for selling your own Steamboat Springs home!