Home sellers may need to get more realistic heading into the new year with signs of a slowing housing market. As for home shoppers, they may find more deals. Seventy-seven percent of current listings will likely sell below the original list price in the first quarter of 2019, according to a new forecast released by Knock, an iBuyer company that offers home sellers instant cash offers on their home.
The company analyzed on-market listings in the largest metros to determine the markets with the highest percentage of homes that are predicted to sell below their original list prices. “Knock has developed six predictive algorithms to determine how much our home trade-in customers’ homes will sell for and when,” says Sean Black, co-founder and CEO of Knock. “By applying these algorithms to the top U.S. markets, we hope to help more home buyers find and act on the best deals, and increase overall market fluidity.”
Home price increases have slowed in the past few months. Still, prices are up about 5 percent year over year, according to housing reports.
Sellers who are pricing their homes too aggressively may end up selling just below their original prices and even below market value because the home lingers on the market for a longer period of time, Knock researchers note. They found that 92 percent of listings that had been on the market two months or longer sold below their list prices. On average, these homes sold for 1.5 percent less than the overall market.
