The new president of the Iowa Association of Realtors says the housing market in the state has evened out.
John Goede is a Realtor in Spencer and says the most recent numbers available showed September sales dropped by nearly 13% compared to last year, but the overall yearly sales are down only 1.6%. Goede says the median sale price was up four-point-two percent even though the inventory of homes is rising.
He says agents are using social media more to generate interest in houses — and there’s also a new trend being used. “A coming soon type thing where you actually market the property before it is ready to show to the public. And that’s created some buzz to and sometimes the first time you have it on the market you may have multiple showings — and then within the next day or so you could have multiple offers,” Goede says. “That’s brought up some prices.”
Interest rates have gone up some this year, but he says they are not a point where they will have a big impact. “It’s still so low that they if they pay an extra couple thousand dollars, the monthly payment is affected maybe less than five dollars per thousand that they borrow,” according to Goede. He says many homeowners who took it on the chin when the house bubble burst, are now seeing some turnaround.
He says the crash of 2008 was real and people lost as much as 10 percent of their equity. Goede says we are having “a steady, not alarming” raise in prices. Goede says things are evening out so both sides tend to be happy when a house is sold.
“It’s been a good market for both. You usually says is this a sellers market or buyers market,” he says, “There’s indications that buyers are still in a pretty good position to buy and sellers are getting a fair price and can expect to be able to live in a house for two or three or four or five years and be able to sell it for a slight gain.”
Goede says the season trend for the rest of the year is for sales to fall off as the weather gets colder. The median sales price for a home was $160,000 in September compared to $153,500 in September 2017.