Brandi Snowden, director of member and consumer survey research at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), lent her expertise to October Research’s 2023 Economic Forecast webinar series.
The shares of homes sold in under a month going back more than a decade, the average numbers of offers received per listing, the shares of buyers seeking non-primary residences and annual existing home sales are just some of the trends touched on by Snowden during the talk.
“Looking at the annual figures, we see it was 5.03 million in 2022,” she said regarding existing home sales. “That was the lowest since 2014, when the sales pace was 4.94 million. Looking at our monthly existing home sales data, we saw that home sales rose 0.2 percent in May from April and year-over-year sales dropped 20.4 percent.”
Other data analyzed by Snowden included the prior living arrangements of recent first-time homebuyers, what buyers want most from real estate agents, sources of downpayment, median expected buyer tenure in home and the most important factors limiting potential clients in completing a transaction.
“Inventory was at the top of the list followed by housing affordability,” Snowden said about client transaction hurdles. “Also, there was difficulty in just finding the right property to purchase. As we continue to see these inventory shortages, many of our younger and first-time homebuyers are also having trouble saving for a downpayment.”
The 30-minute discussion can be accessed here.