A year ago, Covid-19 changed the way we did things – from work, school, grocery shopping – to home buying. This year is no different. So, what can we expect from the Spring Housing Market in 2021? In this video, we are joined by Todd Sheinin, Homespire Mortgage Chief Operating Officer, to discuss what we can expect this year based on what we’ve seen in the past and what economists are predicting moving forward.
Autumn: Rates are still incredibly low. So, I guess my first question is – will they stay low?
Todd: That’s the Magic 8 Ball question that everybody wants to to get the answer to. Rates are so terribly difficult to predict. There is no way to be certain if they’re going to go up, they’re going to go down. The best that you can do is try to educate yourself on what the economists are saying is going to happen. And right now, the consensus is that rates are probably going to stay low for a while – maybe through later of 2021, maybe even into next year. And even if rates do start to come back up a little bit, if you look at it in terms of a historical context, rates are still at incredible levels. It’s going to be a phenomenal market, most likely for a while. All signs are pointing to that. So, I’m expecting that it’s going to be a busy 2021.
Autumn: We know that home inventory is low. What does that mean for the buyer?
Todd: It’s the old theory of supply and demand. If there is low supply/high demand, it’s a seller’s market at that point. As a buyer, you need to go in knowing you’re going into a competitive situation. There’s probably going to be multiple offers. You’re going to need to put your best foot forward. It’s not a situation where you’re probably going to be able to ask for a lot of different concessions from the seller. So, you need to go in knowing that, that you might be paying top dollar, at the top of what the market is. You’ll want to make sure you’re working with a strong lender that’s respected in the community. And you want to be very on point with everything about your offer. Obviously, your agent is going to be able to walk you through the details of that, but the more aggressive you can be in terms of settling faster and having faster contingency dates for financing, for appraisal, that’s going to help your offer stand out against some of the others. So, you want to work with your agent to see what can you do to make yours a little bit better than somebody else’s.
Autumn: And then, finally, how do you think Covid will affect the upcoming spring housing market, if it all?
Todd: So, just judging based on what happened in 2020 with Covid, I think the logical thinking was that people wouldn’t be buying houses, that they wouldn’t be wanting to go into other people’s houses with a pandemic that’s out there like that. And what we saw was actually the opposite. People were willing to go into houses. They would mask up and use precaution, but they would go in. They would do Zoom calls. Their agent would walk through with a phone. People were buying sight unseen. And the fear of being on lockdown, in quarantine, people took that and said I can’t be in this little house any longer or this little apartment and have to do that again. So, people used it as a motivating factor to actually go and start looking to go buy something a little bit bigger. You had people in the city looking to move out of the city. So, the suburbs have done really, really well because people wanted to get out. They didn’t want to be trapped in the petri dish kind of area where the city’s gotten hit really, really hard during Covid. So, it was the opposite of what I think you would have thought normally would have happened. And I have no reason to believe that that’s going to be any different now.
If you’re ready to tackle the Spring Market, start by getting pre-approved. Visit https://www.homespiremortgage.com/apply-now/ to start your application today!