The National Association of Realtors has released their annual report of Home Buyers and Home Sellers. This is our second segment, if you missed the Home Buyer report, please visit www.SternTeam.org, there’s a lot of valuable insight. Today we’re going to cover the NAR’s 2019 profile of home sellers.
• Remember that the typical home buyer was 47 years old? 2 decades older than when I first started my real estate career. Well the typical home seller was 57 years old? Now I’m starting to get a clearer picture of why our inventory levels have been so low. When I first started selling real estate a homeowner would live on average between 3-5 years in their home and then move. I think the Great Recession of 2008-2011 really changed the dynamics of real estate. People are living in their homes much longer, about 10 years on average according to the NAR. Obviously this is a national number, as you’ll find in metropolitan areas along the Wasatch Front they move more often. But still, this means we’ve had much less inventory over the past decade for buyers to choose from. That fact coupled with sellers holding off to sell their homes because of COVID 19 has really put a damper on the availability of homes for sale. It actually means that if you need to sell, do it now. You’re in the driver’s seat!
• Just like buyers, 89% of sellers worked with a real estate agent or broker to sell their home. About 6% sold to someone they already know. That’s smart as it may seem easy to sell a home, but in reality there are over 180 tasks to navigate to get a home successfully sold. To avoid the headache, contact a real estate professional!
• For recently sold homes, the final sales price was a median of 99% of the final listing price. This doesn’t necessarily track price adjustments made on listings that were over priced for the market. This is just the median list to sale price of the FINAL list price of a home.
• 75% of sellers contacted only one agent for the job of selling their home. 66% found that agent through a referral from a friend, neighbor, coworker or relative. This is also true for our business. The majority of our business comes through referrals, which we appreciate. Referrals are the lifeblood of our business through the past 2 decades.
• 44% of all sellers traded up into a larger home
• The median equity cashed out during the sale for future investment into another home was $60,000. That’s a lot of bucks! We talked about the networth of a homeowner being 45 times that of a renter, and here is just one example of that fact.
• The distance between a home sold and a new home purchase was 20 miles. People usually move to improve school districts, house size, garage size and yard.
• The average home owner lived in the home they sold for 10 years.
Well that’s a lot of numbers to digest, and that’s officially a wrap. In real estate it pays to hire a professional who knows their market. It’s great to have a look at national numbers, but a true real estate professional is a local economist. They’ll know the local trends to help you capitalize on the sale price and speed of sale for your home.
