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Low Inventory Is Leading to Hurried Home Purchases

  • June 28th 2017

by Nena Perry-Brown

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After nine consecutive quarters in which the supply of homes for sale fell, inventory is 20 percent lower in the country and the effects extend beyond just pricing.

Low Inventory Is Leading to Hurried Home Purchases: Figure 1
Nationwide change in inventory compared to how long homes stay on the market

A new study from Trulia asserts that there is a correlation with falling inventory and the speed with which buyers are snapping up homes. Since Trulia began examining this metric in 2012, the share of listings that were still on the market after two months has fallen from 57 percent to 47 percent.

“On average, metros with the largest decreases in inventory over the past five years have also seen significantly fewer homes on the market after two months,” the report explains.

Although this rush to buy has been evident in the DC-area housing market to anyone observing, the region is not in the top 10 metro areas where homes are moving fastest. Buyers are moving the quickest in San Jose and Oakland, California, where fewer than 21 percent of houses remain on the market two months after being listed.

The Trulia study measures how long homes stay on the market based on listings on Trulia, calculating how many were still on the market two months after being listed. Trulia opted to use the two-month measure rather than calculating the median days on market (DOM) because DOM could be skewed by a flux of new listings.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/low_inventory_leads_to_hurried_home_purchases/12741.

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