Pavlich said he watched as sold homes he had bid on resurfaced as rentals. “My fiancé’s parents sold their home to Zillow — we saw it for rent less than a month later,” Pavlich said.
Absentee buying increased in 40 out of 55 San Antonio ZIP codes with measurable buyer activity. Often, the greatest increases occurred in entry level-priced areas.
Most of the homes Pavlich looked at were in the $200,000 — $300,000 range — a category of home that is quickly disappearing. In 2019, 52% of new homes sold in the South were priced under $300,000, Census Bureau data shows. By 2022, that figure was 13%.
In Bexar County, Texas’ 78250 ZIP code, where Pavlich searched and where the median home price is $236,500, the share of absentee sales nearly doubled. It increased from 19% in the two years before March 2020 to 34.6% in the time since.
Across San Antonio, the 10 ZIP codes with the largest increases in absentee purchases had median sale prices ranging from the mid-$100,000s to the lower $300,000s.
While Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell expected a reset of the housing market, these decreases have not materialized. Instead, aspiring homeowners face continued high housing prices on top of high-interest and mortgage rates.
For wealthier, cash-holding buyers, mortgage rate rises may be a boon.
The mortgage rate changes slowed the market and created a window for buyers already there, Bokhari, from Redfin, said, such as mom-and-pop outfits looking to buy a rental property.
And as increased mortgage rates swept competition out of the market, those buyers can continue to make the same offers, Graham, the Georgia realtor, said.
For some, the pressure has been too much. Hannah Quinn, a stylist at Madewell in Nashville, spent four months looking for a house in 2022 before giving up and deciding to rent.
“I’ve seen out-of-town investors, AirBnB owners, people who moved out of the city, but wanted to keep a property on the side for passive income,” Quinn, 24, said. ”It’s so cutthroat that buying a home is not on my radar anymore.
“At some point, I just needed a place to live.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
