Led by affordable markets in the Midwest and South, the pace of home sales did its best Usain Bolt impression (we are approaching the Summer Olympic games, after all) and accelerated to its fastest level ever recorded, Redfin reports.
Despite the Midwest and the South leading the way, the pickup in sales was not exclusive to those regions. Almost one-third of the markets tracked by Redfin experienced double-digit growth.
A total of 263,000 homes were sold in May 2016, an 11.4 percent month-over-month increase and a 7.0 percent year-over-year increase. Meanwhile, the number of new listings dropped by 2.8 percent month-over-month and 2.2 percent from May 2015. The number of homes for sale from this same time last year changed by -6.6 percent and the months of supply fell by 0.5 to a total of 3.2.
Detroit saw the largest increase for an individual city with a year-over-year change in its home sales of 58 percent. Grand Rapids, another Michigan city, had the second largest increase at 54 percent. Other affordable markets with large increases include St Louis (35 percent), Little Rock, Ark., (33 percent), and Birmingham, Ala. (33 percent). For Grand Rapids, especially, the inventory is very low and homes are selling almost immediately after being put on the market.
Much of the growth for affordable markets is coming from tech migration from more expensive cities such as San Francisco, Southern California, and Seattle. Another factor in the increased sales pace is the 30-year mortgage rates that reached three-year lows at 3.6 percent this spring.
For the full report and for accompanying graphs and charts, follow the link below.
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