While Plymouth on-the-market homes jumped to 81 near May’s end, from 56 one year ago, the severe shortage of homes for sale continues. The median price for a single-family home jumped from $739,412 to nearly $750,000 in May. (Curiously Average Days on Market plummeted from 64 to 49.) Condos on the market rose from 26 to 50. Still slim pickins.
Will the increasing number of seniors at retirement age look to downsize, putting their larger homes on the market? If so, they will have to forego their all-time-low mortgages, obtained mostly through refinances several years ago.
We hear that many aging seniors will stay put to keep their low-rate mortgages and have room for visiting family, while a large percentage will opt for smaller homes, increasing inventory. Yet as many as 40 percent of seniors, nationally, have paid off their mortgages, having no debt at all. (Still, this group has plenty of home equity, if they wanted to purchase an investment property or second home.)
Meredith Whitney, the Wall Street forecaster who correctly predicted the housing bust during the Great Depression of 2008 now forecasts a “Silver Tsunami” of seniors’ homes hitting the market. As a result, Whitney said that housing prices will fall in late 2024 due to the flood of baby boomers who will downsize in the coming years. (Whitney is known as “the Oracle of Wall Street”.) She cautioned that enough younger buyers might not exist to sustain the housing market. Sellers may be compelled to sell at lower prices, she said.
We will be watching closely for any signs of a flood – even a puddle! For now, the housing market remains dry like a desert.
Contact Steve Feldman or Beth Davis if you would like to know how the market looks in your Plymouth-area community.