Competition heats up with five offers per home sold

Market Trend

Competition heats up with five offers per home sold

The spring residential real estate market is already well underway, and it is blooming, and so is the competition. Buyer competition intensified ahead of the official start of the spring selling and buying season and it will most likely intensify further over the next few weeks.

On average, there were nearly five offers for every home sold in February and March, higher than in other recent months, according to the 2022 Realtors Confidence Index Survey from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Real estate professionals who were surveyed reported more than five offers, on average, in Colorado, Massachusetts, Georgia, Texas, Utah, Washington, and California.

Nationwide, 48 percent of buyers’ offers were above the list price, according to NAR’s data. On average, those offers were about 2.9 percent above the list price; on the median-priced home, that would be about $10,000 over the asking price. However, 13 percent of the offers were 10 percent above the list price.

Real estate brokers report that in general, their buyers typically lose two homes before succeeding on the third try, according to the study. Homes are selling quickly under the intense competition. Eighty-four percent of listings were on the market for less than a month.

Competition could intensify even more in 2022 before waning in 2023 as home buyers compete to lock in at the current rates, and mortgage rates may rise more steeply in 2023, says an NAR research economist