I wonder how much of this is related to the eviction moratorium. Anecdotally, my wife has a house that had a tenant in it. She was planning on selling it last year, but she had a hard time getting the tenant out. His lease had expired, and he also hadn't paid rent. He thought that the moratorium should cover him even though his lease had expired for several months. She only recently got him to move out, and she put the house up for sale right away. I bet there are more sellers than her in this situation.<p>I suspect that once the moratorium is up, there will be a lot of landlords looking to sell. They've been not getting rent for a long time, and they may have to sell in order to get out of the hole they're in. Many still have mortgages, but they will have a hard time collecting a year worth of rent. But the bank won't have the same problem foreclosing.
I find it strange that for one of the largest transactions most people will ever make, they choose to use an advisor with little or no real education in the subject, with whom they have a relationship that's steeped in moral hazard.
We need more Brokers in California.<p>For years, a Broker’s license could be obtained by 8 courses, An easy test, and a four year degree.<p>The Realator's Lobby decided their were too many Brokers.<p>They introduced a bill (A bill requiring years of training under a broker in order to get the license) to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold said he didn’t see the need, and didn’t want to stifle competition.<p>Governor Brown signed the bill though. (I stopped judging a politician by there party that day. Both sides take a lot of money.)<p>I would love to see the entire real estate industry decimated. We have given a very few of these people so much money for what? In the mean time, I would like to see more Brokers. More competition for the popular cheerleaders, handholding, and Omission and error insurance?<p>Sorry about the tone. Realator’s have always irritated me, and most people pick them out by a personality contest?
Makes sense when a large chunk of the country is unemployed and you can get a real estate license online relatively painlessly. Filter down to agents who actually have a client and/or have bought or sold a single home and the number will be very different.
Where we live the market is especially tight. We ended up selling our home by saying we would not sell if you have a realtor and this is the price you will pay and you will not have an appraisal contingency. The very first people to come and look at it bought it. The market is very much a seller's market right now.<p>We also purchased a new home without having a realtor involved. These days, the Internet makes things so easy that there isn't a need for a realtor like there used to be.
The housing market is bonkers in Minneapolis. This Saturday we put an offer in on home that went on the market Thursday. There were 31 other offers. We offered 20% over asking, but didn't get it. That was our fourth unsuccessful offer so far. Three of the winners for the other offers supposedly had both appraisal gaps and waived inspections.
I'm not sure this is news?<p>In December 2019, there were about 1.4 million existing homes for sale. [0]<p>That same month, there were about 2,000,000 active real estate agents [1]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/existing-home-sales-trends-2009-2019" rel="nofollow">https://www.nar.realtor/blogs/economists-outlook/existing-ho...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/quick-real-estate-statistics" rel="nofollow">https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics/quick-real-e...</a>
This matches my anecdotal experience. Last week my parents, who live outside a big US city, got a letter out of the blue from a buyer’s agent asking if they’d want to sell their home. They don’t; it wasn’t and isn’t listed for sale. They’ve lived in the home for decades, and never before received this type of solicitation. I see it as a marker of a tapped-out housing market.
Slightly off topic but... as someone that is moving out of the city and even a few states over does anyone have any advice on home buying? Would it be better to buy now or rent for a bit and then buy? Is that like asking what stocks to invest in or is it more predictable than that? I have zero experience with this sort of thing.
It makes sense because houses don’t stay on the market very long.<p>What matters for average real estate agent wages is average price of real estate time number of houses that sell per month. If the number of houses on the market is small because they sell immediately, that’s it necessarily a problem for them.
Why don't we just simply tell people straight up "If you don't have capital at this moment, you most likely never will" because that is the way things seem to be going.
House prices are usually tied to income levels by 3x income. This is about what people can afford if it drive past this you have a bubble.
<a href="https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-income-ratio/" rel="nofollow">https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...</a>
Look at where we are now.<p>Housing is a decent hedge against inflation but not the great investment make it out to be unless you’re a landlord. The truth is there is a lot of upkeep and if housing prices rise you will have to pay the same as your sale when you sell. It’s great if you’re downsizing, or moving from an expensive city to a rural spot, but if you’re just changing locales you have to eat the transaction cost.
I can't read the full article, but I did just buy a house in the greater boston area. The housing market is very tight now. Very small number of houses available relative to the historical seasonal norm. Part of that was driven by a very hot market in the previous months which are normally empty. The number of buyers is very very high. Most properties are going as soon as they hit the market, for a fair chunk over list.
The title seems misleading to me. Let me explain.<p>1) Average homes sold per real estate agent, per year: 2.8 [0]<p>It means that on average, on a given month, only 1/2.8 = 35.7% of active real estate agents will be listing a home for sale.<p>2) Homes for sale per year: 6,220,000 [1], however it seems that January 2021 saw that number go to an annualized of 6.69M. [2]<p>3) To say that in January there were "more real estate agents than homes for sale", would mean that there are at least 6.69M / 2.8 = 2,389,000 active real estate agents in the US.<p>I don't have a WSJ membership, and therefore can't read in the article what this number is. I can only try to guess that it's either the total number of real estate agents (2M in 2019), or realtors (1.3M in 2019) [3].<p>The title seems clickbaity. The essence, I guess, should be that realtors are competing against each other more than before?<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.rtrsells.com/can-you-tell-how-many-homes-a-realtor-has-sold/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rtrsells.com/can-you-tell-how-many-homes-a-realt...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/ehs-02-2021-summary-2021-03-22.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/ehs-02...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-home-sales-edged-higher-in-january-amid-tight-inventory-11613747681" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-home-sales-edged-higher-in-...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://www.homelight.com/blog/how-many-realtors-in-the-us/" rel="nofollow">https://www.homelight.com/blog/how-many-realtors-in-the-us/</a>
Wouldn't the natural solution to this be real-estate agents accepting lower commissions? Or transition to a non-commissioned pay rate?<p>RE agents historically provided massive value because <i>they</i> were the market-makers. Nowadays, they are glorified paper pushers and it's baffling they're still demanding a percentage of a massive purchase.
Can’t read without subscription.<p>But, I was wondering...<p>Is this one of those click-bait article titles that should read:<p>“In January [, similarly to the last 120 months,] there were more real-estate agents than homes for sale in the U.S.”<p>Note: I’m referring to the sub-heading of the actual article... not implying OP put the wrong title.
Imagine if there were more used car sales salespeople than there were used cars.<p>That's what a "realtor" is BTW: A used house salesman.
I think this metric is irrelevant without looking at time-on-market.<p>Each agent may still sell a dozen a year.<p>There are also more stock brokers than stocks, but we slice them up and shuffle them around a lot.
If they were for sale, they weren't homes. They were houses.<p>Seriously. It creeps me out that RE people call things nobody has even lived in "homes". Places somebody else lived in are even worse. How do they know it was a home? It might have been crack house. "Crack home"? Anyway what you can buy is just the house part. It becomes home after you make it that, if you succeed.<p>The idea that you can <i>buy</i> a <i>home</i> emphasizes the worst of American capitalism.