I like to participate in Bank of America’s monthly market survey of Realtors and real estate agents. It’s a nice survey that they put together that gives investors an indication of where the market is headed.
“We survey real estate agents, as we believe that agents will provide an accurate assessment of housing market trends in both the new and existing home markets.”
And by participating each month, they send me the results as soon as they are released.
They ask five simple questions about buyer traffic, home prices and builder/seller incentives. As you can gather on the chart at left, all are on a downward trend, at least in Tampa.
Here are some quotes that different area agents offered:
- “Buyers are very cautious.”
- “Tax reform is not up to expectations, and customers are opting to wait until taxes are brought back into line.”
- “Buyers don’t realize how good a price they can get if they just make an offer.”
- “Mortgage brokers and underwriters are not on same page. Pre-approvals are being turned down when it comes down to the underwriting of the loan.”
- “The market is dead.”
Come on now, the market’s not dead. I guess it is for that agent, but people are buying. Just look at the numbers. “Dead” is relative term I guess, especially when comparing to the recent past.
I agree with most of the other statements however, especially about buyers being cautious and buyers not realizing how good of a deal they can get right now. But no one not many want to buy when there is doubt about where prices are going. When a buyer sees the inventory out there and realizes it’s not moving, and they don’t see many others out looking, you can sort of understand the trepidation.
But these survey reports are good because you get the opinions of the ones in the trenches, and those opinions will likely reflect the future stabilization and subsequent turn in the marketplace. Stay tuned.
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