Photo: Micah Sheldon/Flickr
The Seattle housing market is so white hot right now that some real estate experts are comparing it to the current cryptocurrency juggernaut Bitcoin.
The popular Washington State metro was recently named the hottest market on the West Coast in a recent survey conducted by the listing site WeBuyHouses.com, and it’s showing no signs of cooling in 2018.
WeBuyHouses.com’s Vice President of Marketing Dev Horn unequivocally calls Seattle, WA the country’s overall hottest housing market.
“Seattle is a crazy market right now, borderline irrational. Seattle real estate is like buying Bitcoin — it doesn’t make sense, but it keeps going up so you just keep trying to buy it,” Horn tells BuzzBuzzNews.
Some 41 real experts from 33 different local housing markets were recently asked by WeBuyHouses.com for their sentiment about the US housing market in 2018 with regards to price trends, inventory and market type (buyer’s or seller’s market).
According to respondents, Seattle has all the hallmarks of being a hot market: rising prices, falling inventory and rising labor and construction costs. The market is classified as a seller’s market.
One respondent noted that it was “very difficult to buy homes in Seattle right now, with over 30 percent of homes being valued at over $1 million at the moment.”
On the national level, nearly 70 percent of respondents felt that 2018 would be a seller’s market due to tight inventory levels, with less than 10 percent saying it would be a buyer’s market.
Almost two-thirds of respondents felt that home prices would rise again this year. By the end of 2018, WeBuyHouses.com predicts that the national median home price will rise 5.5 percent to $262,000, up from $248,000 recorded last year.
Just over a third of respondents felt that home prices would stay “about the same” in 2018.
And, with national inventory levels continuing to fall below historic levels it was not surprising that 31 percent of surveyed experts believed inventory would continue to fall in 2018, while over 46 percent felt it would remain “about the same.” Only 22 percent of respondents felt it would increase.
Inventory is likely to remain the housing market’s principal driver in 2018.
“The economy has recovered faster than the housing market could keep up with it. New builders in 2014-2017 were all building high-end homes so the supply of affordable housing has not improved as demand increased over the past few years,” Horn tells BuzzBuzzNews.
And despite what appeared to be a shift by homebuilders toward more affordable housing, Horn adds that the 2018 housing market “looks a lot like 2017.”
However, a big variable of this year’s housing market is the impact of the newly passed GOP tax bill.
“While some areas will feel the impact of the tax bill, if the overall economy continues to grow at the rate it is, this effect will be minor and 2018 will be a significantly above average year for transactions,” Brandt tells BuzzBuzzNews.
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