Are We In A Buyer's Market?

• July 2nd 2024

by UrbanTurf Staff

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The housing market in the DC region is in a bit of a weird place. Record home prices and high interest rates are putting a damper on some buyer demand, and the supply of homes for sale is rising notably.

With these metrics in mind, UrbanTurf reached out to Bright MLS chief economist Lisa Sturtevant to see if she thought the market might be headed in favor of homebuyers:

We have definitely seen an uptick in new listings and a bit of a pullback in buyer activity. And it is true that buyers that remain in the market have more leverage than they used to. More sellers are offering concessions to buyers, including closing costs assistance and funds for repairs.

But by traditional measures of “buyers markets” and “sellers markets”, we are still way off from it being a buyers market. At the end of May, there was just 1.81 months of supply in the DC metro area. Generally, between 4 and 6 months of supply is considered a “balanced” market. Above that is a buyers market and below that is a sellers market. Only the District itself is in the “balanced market” range.

So while I don’t think we are truly in a buyers market here in the DC region, the buyers who are able to handle high mortgage rates and still-high prices will be able to negotiate far more than they have been able to over the past few years.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/a-buyers-market/22479.