After five years of carefully saving money for a down payment on their first home, Christine Rodriguez, and her husband, Oscar, hoped to finally move out of their rented trailer in Des Moines, Iowa.
The pandemic made their need more urgent. With five of their six kids studying online from home, the three-room dwelling was starting to feel untenable.
The children, ages 6 through 17, couldn’t even freely play outside.
“When you live in a trailer, your neighbors are so close," says Christine, a waitress at a sports bars. "We have a yard, but it's not too much. We just wanted them to be able to go out and just be kids, like, you know, screaming and yelling and just having fun playing and not bothering other people because we're so close.”
After contacting a real estate agent to look for starter homes between $150,000 and $220,000, Rodriguez says she found about 25 listings she was interested in. But 10 were gone before she could make an appointment to view them, and the others were snapped up within hours of her visiting.
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“We don't even have time to process or think, and they're like, OK, it just sold,” she says. “It doesn't feel like there's anything out there. Or if there is, I feel like some of them are priced way too high and the sellers aren't willing to come down at all.”
Rodriguez’s experience reflects a national trend. The number of homes sold nationally in the $250,000 - $100,000 range fell by 11% in February from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors told USA TODAY. In the under $100,000 price range, the percentage of homes sold dropped by 26%. But homes sold for over $1 million rose by 81%.
In the current red-hot pandemic housing market, where prices have risen across the board, the ability to purchase homes seems proportional to the price range – the higher the range, the greater the sales. Growth has historically been similar across price tiers, but that has diverged during the pandemic, according to an analysis by Redfin.
Take Chappaqua, New York, which is 35 miles north of Midtown Manhattan and a hamlet where Bill and Hillary Clinton live. Just two years ago, homes priced for over $2 million would sit on the market for a long time, says Usha Subramaniam, a real estate broker with Compass.
In 2019, two homes sold for over $2 million. Last year, in the middle of the pandemic, that number jumped to 17. This year, 17 homes in that price range had already sold or were in contract by April.
Wealthier Americans are buying up pricey, larger properties in places like Chappaqua because they want houses with offices, gyms and other amenities while they and their families continue to work and entertain themselves from home during the pandemic.
“They want move-in ready homes," Subramaniam says. “They want the big white kitchen. They want the big family room. They want a huge master bathroom. In other words, they want a classic grand house. If they're going to leave the city, then they want to have it all here.”
Lower-priced homes, where sales have decreased, tell another story about the economy.
The reason for the decline in their sales is not due to a lack of demand, experts say, but rather a combination of low inventory and increasing prices caused by fierce competition. As a result, it's harder for many Americans to buy their first homes, and that missed opportunity can widen the wealth gap, economists say.
"It is clear that homeownership is one of the most successful and biggest sources of wealth creation, particularly at the lower end of the income spectrum," says Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American. "They don't own a home and therefore they cannot generate the wealth."
U.S. home prices rose in February at the fastest pace in nearly 15 years as strong demand for housing, low mortgage rates and a national housing shortage gathered momentum.
The February S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. national home price index, released Tuesday, rose 12% from a year earlier, the biggest gain since 2006.
"The housing boom will continue through 2021," says Abbey Omodunbi, a senior economist for PNC Financial Services. "The run-up in house prices will erode affordability, particularly for first-time homebuyers."
She notes, however, but the passage of the First-Time Homebuyer Act bill, which would provide a tax credit for rookie buyers, should support demand from people looking for their first property.
Prices of the country’s most affordable homes rose 16.5% year over year in the first
quarter, with luxury prices seeing a similar gain (14.7%), according to an analysis by Redfin.
In January, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate, the most popular home loan product, sank to its lowest level on record to 2.65%, according to mortgage finance company Freddie Mac. Mortgage rates set record lows more than a dozen times last year.
Although rates have ticked up recently, they remain near all-time lows at 2.97% for the 30-year fixed mortgage. That’s down nearly two percentage points since November 2018, when rates stood at 4.94%.
"People are able to buy higher-priced homes because they have the purchasing power driven by low mortgage rates," says Fleming.
These rates, however, are typically for buyers who bring strong credit scores and large down payments to the table. First-time homebuyers face stricter lending requirements as lenders want to ensure that borrowers can still make their mortgage payments following a historic wave of layoffs.
Mark Stark, CEO of Americana Holdings, which owns Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nevada Properties, Arizona Properties and California Properties and has 3,500 agents in the three states, says he’s seen first-time buyers struggling to make successful offers.
“I have seen traditional buyers who are well-qualified being squeezed out,” he says. “They don't have such additional cash to put down. They also lose out when they're going against a cash offer, which is simpler for the seller.”
Another reason for the low supply of affordable homes is the cumulative effect of builders not putting up enough homes since the last housing crisis — when many went bankrupt, says Lawrence Yun, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors.
The U.S. housing market shortage increased to 3.8 million units by the end of 2020, according to new data from Freddie Mac.
"Builders have focused on luxury homes because of higher margins," Yun says.
A number of factors have contributed to the lack of available housing, says Robert Dietz, the chief economist for the National Home Builders Association. The cost of building a new single-family home in the affordable price range, for instance, is now more challenging because of regulatory requirements, such as town permits, but also higher lumber costs and exclusionary zoning laws that prohibit homes to be built on small lots.
“You can see quickly how difficult it is to build, say a $250,000 house in California,” he says.
Lumber prices have soared nearly 200% since mid-April 2020, increasing the average price of a new home by $24,000, he says.
“Lumber price spikes are not only sidelining buyers during a period of high demand, they are forcing builders to put projects on hold at a time when home inventories are already at a record low,” he says.
The supply shortage in the luxury market is less severe than the supply shortage in
other price tiers partly because more high-end homeowners are putting their
properties up for sale. New listings of luxury homes grew 15.8% year over year in the
first quarter, while new listings in most other price tiers declined, according to the Redfin report.
Tiffany Ehler, an real estate agent in Des Moines, Iowa, where the average median home price is $235,000, said she’s never experienced such an overheated market.
“The Midwest market typically is very steady. This is the first spring that I honestly feel like there's just so much a demand, it's leaving us scrambling," she says. "Anything $250,000 and below is literally selling in seconds.”
Sellers are also looking at some new strategies.
“When a listing comes on the market, the listing agent will put right in the comments that no offers will be accepted for the next three days,” says Ehler. “And that actually will allow the buyers a chance to get into the property. They will look at all offers on the day they pick and will want the highest and the best offers, so there's no negotiating at the same time.”
With the bidding wars and high prices, the appraisals often do not come in at the offered purchase price.
“All of a sudden people are scrambling because now buyers can't get the property at that price because the lenders will not lend on that amount of money,” she says. “So that's not good for sellers and that’s not good for buyers.”
Ehler says she is also concerned about buyers waiving inspections to stay competitive with their offers. “You're talking about a potential first-time home buyer, then you get into the property and you may have some surprises that you weren't prepared for,” she says.
Ehler recently started working with Christine Rodriguez, the mother of six who lives in a trailer, after she failed to have any success with her first agent.
Rodriguez said the process has been frustrating. Each time she goes to view a house, her children get excited, and she eventually has to give them the bad news.
"They have waited for a long time. I am just looking for a three-bedroom house. A big enough kitchen to put a dining table so we can all sit and eat together,” she says. “I just want my kids to have a bigger yard and just be able to move around freely.”
Reporter Jessica Menton contributed to this report.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is the Housing and Economy reporter for USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter @SwapnaVenugopal
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