Prospective home-buyers continue to emerge from hibernation as spring rolls on, but they are hampered by a lack of available homes, according to a new survey of members conducted by Virginia Realtors.
Nearly 1,100 members participated in the survey, conducted April 26 to May 1, including more than 800 who had participated in at least one transaction (representing either the seller or buyer) in the past month.
The monthly “buyer activity index” for April stood at 65 on a 0-to-100 scale, up from 51 in March and the best score in a year.
Among respondents, 47 percent said buyer activity was “high” or “very high” in their communities, while only 17 percent said it was “low” or “very low.”
But shift over to the seller side of the equation, and a very different story was told.
The “seller activity index” score of 11 (also on a 0-to-100 scale) was down from the already anemic 15 a month before, with 81 percent of respondents saying seller activity in their locales was low to very low (up from 73% a month before) and only 4 percent saying it was high to very high (down from 5%).
The reasoning for sellers’ reluctance is not hard to fathom: In the years leading up to early 2021, homeowners were able to obtain mortgage financing at historic lows, whether buying a home or refinancing. Those buyers remain disinclined to give up those long-term mortgages.
The newly higher (albeit not historically high) interest rates do not seem to be particularly fazing buyers who are coming into the market now, a year after the first spikes. Only 16 percent of respondents to the Virginia Realtors’ survey said increasing interest rates were their clients’ main impediments to buying a home, compared to 48 percent who said it was a lack of inventory causing the problem.
The survey each month also asks respondents to guesstimate how the Virginia market will be behaving in three months’ time.
The latest projections are in line with current conditions: 42 percent of respondents believe buyer activity will be strong toward the middle of summer, up from 29 percent who believed the same a month before, but only 7 percent think seller activity will be high, down slightly.
Full details can be found at www.virginiarealtors.org under “Research.”
The monthly survey is not a scientific sampling of the trade organization’s membership, but the response level is high enough for it to be a good snapshot of sentiment, officials say.
