Hope Leitner, Realtor®, CRS

  You may have heard that there are more  brand-new homes  available right now than the norm. Today, about  one in three  homes on the market are newly built. And if you’re wondering what that means for the housing market and for your  own move , here’s what you need to know. Why This Isn’t Like 2008 People remember what happened to the housing market back in  2008 . And one of the factors that contributed to that crash was that there were too many  homes for sale . While only part of the oversupply back then came from builders, the lasting impact is that some people still feel uneasy when they hear new home construction has ramped up. Even though the supply of new homes has grown this year, the data shows there’s no need to worry. Builders aren’t overbuilding, they’re just catching up.  The graph below uses data from the  Census  to  show  the number of new houses built over the last 52 years. Following the crash in 2008,...

  Are big investors really buying up all the  homes  today? If you’re trying to find a  house to buy , this may be something you’re wondering about. Maybe you’ve read about it or seen reels on social media saying investors buying all the homes is making it even harder to find what the average buyer is looking for. But spoiler alert – there’s a lot of misinformation out there. To clear things up, here's the scoop on what's really happening. A lot of the big investor activity is actually in the rearview mirror already. The  Wall Street Journal  (WSJ)  explains : “Investors of all sizes spent billions of dollars buying homes during the pandemic. At the 2022 peak, they bought more than one in every four single-family homes sold, though  more recently their activity has slowed as interest rates rose and supply became tighter .” The key here is investor activity has slowed significantly, and even during the peak of investor buying, 3 out of every 4 sing...