Housing market remains hot in the Valley despite national trends
Mahoning Valley - Nationwide reports show the housing market is cooling off, but here in the Mahoning Valley it remains red hot.
Real estate agents report in the United States, about one in five home sellers lowered their price in May, a sign the market is softening.
However, in the Valley, one in 75 sellers reduced their prices locally.
Local realtors said it's still a hot market with lots of demand and low inventory, and do not see there being any drastic changes anytime soon.
A lot of it has to do with our location and lower cost of living, and we tend to fall behind the national trends, according to Valley realtors.
"We've been behind for so long, our values were so low that with inflation and everything, we may have just been catching up closer to a national average," Broker Owner of Kelly Warren and Associates said, "With the prices of everything else up in the world... you're paying more for milk, you're paying more gas...maybe you're just paying more for houses now too and these prices may be here to stay."
The average home in the Valley is about $160,000 versus $425,000 in the United States.
"We might not follow the national trend just given we are still quite a bit cheaper," Real Estate Agent Mark Douglass of More Options Realty LLC, said.
Both Douglass and Warren predict there will be a cool off in the winter, but said interest rates are expected to hike in July while inflation will keep home resale prices up when it comes to the cost of any needed materials.
For a seller, the advice is clear.
"If I was a seller and I was thinking about selling, I'd put my house on the market right now," Warren said.
For buyers, unless you're cash-heavy, they both said it's also not a bad idea right now to consider buying a home if you're in the market for one while the interest rate is still at about 5%.
"I think that they should try to buy now given that the fed is still talking about rate hikes given that they [buyer] can lock in a lower rate and have a lower payment," Douglass said.
Warren and Douglass said come winter, we could see home prices level off, where the home is sold either at the asking price or about $20,000 less.
However, both said if you're paying more in interest over 30 years, it likely won't save anything versus if you buy now.
