AMARILLO, TEXAS -- Point your car down just about any street in Amarillo right now... Are you seeing that a lot of houses are up for bid?
Pronews 7 did, and we wondered about it. You don't have to drive too far before you notice "For Sale" signs on just about every block, but are more homes than usual on the market right now?
According to Greg Glenn, a Prudential Real Estate Broker, it's just that time of the year.
"We're seeing kind of that usual seasonal increase in listings, kind of the summer time represents more people that that's the time that they choose to move, so people have waited until near the summer time to put their house on the market," Glenn said. "So we see more of them coming up right now."
According to Glenn, at this point in the year, the number of listings are actually down from last year, but does that mean the market value of homes is down as well?
"Your purchase of a home last year might've been skewed because you had some tax credits, so people were paying a little bit more because they had a tax credit check that they going to get. Then what happens is it started to kind of iron out and just became flat, so we've kind of flat lined, you bought a house last year to this year they're going to be about the same value."
Glenn said the subtraction of tax credit affected the market initially, but as of now, it's falling back into its normal pattern, and today's low interest rates have people buying, because that, along with low down payments, may not be around forever.
"There's also some talk that the amount of down payment that’s necessary to buy a home may increase so that could also bring people into the market place, because a year from now they might be looking at a 20% down to buy where today it may be 5 percent."
In a press release from Coldwell Bank, not only are the number of listings down, but the number of foreclosures is down more than 50 percent at this time last year.
