By Victor Omondi
(YourBlackWorld:)
Kristin Harris is one among the many Americans who’re not loving the housing market. She and her family can’t wait to be in a home in Virginia that they’ll call theirs. However, she says the real challenge lies in when you set out to look for one.
“You have to be so competitive,” she told ABC News. “By the time we even like a house to put in an offer, it’s already gotten an offer that’s been accepted.”
Currently, the housing industry is seeing a rise in demand for homes, yet there aren’t enough to fit all these buyers. Hence, the available homes are going out for incredibly high prices. There’s one more thing she faces – bidding wars.
According to Harris, home prices have been increased by about $50,000. Aspiring homeowners seem to be wound up by the rising interest rates, which don’t promise to go down anytime soon.
The Federal Reserve’s next month meeting will try to find ways to increase borrowing costs by increasing interest rates. This is all an attempt to lower the curve of the ongoing surging inflation.
Brookings Institution senior fellow David Wessel told ABC News that the current inflation is caused by the little supply available, hence, cannot satisfy the available high demand.
“So the whole point of the Fed is to slow the increase in demand. They want fewer people to borrow, and they want people who borrow to borrow less,” he told the out-let.
Everyone’s waiting in hope that the Fed’s announcement calms down the situation. A 30-year-fixed mortgage rose above 4% this month for the first time since 2018. Meaning, if a borrower takes $300,000 to buy a home, they’ll have to pay $143 more than he paid four months ago when the rates were barely 3%, Bankrate explained.
That means many people will go without buying homes for now. However, looking back at mid-2018, the rates had almost reached 5%.
“It’s insane. Right now inventory is really low, and competition is pretty high,” Washington, D.C.-based realtor Roger Taylor told ABC News, adding that houses are selling in a matter of hours.
