Published on 6 Mar 2024 on Fortune via Yahoo Finance
The U.S. housing market is headed into a pivotal spring season as home sellers wait for their sweet...
The last few years have seen a wave of ups and downs for homebuyers and sellers–from homeowners who rode to the height of the sellers' market during the pandemic to buyers who contended with the most historic market shift in 40 years. Coming into the traditionally busy spring selling season, it seems almost impossible to predict but there are early indications that 2024 could be the year of the “seller sweet spot.”
Since 2021, Opendoor has conducted quarterly surveys of over 4,000 prospective home sellers. Year-over-year quarterly tracking (beginning in March 2022) shows relatively little change in the number of sellers who were planning to sell within the year. We even saw a slight decrease in Q2.
However, in our December 2023 survey, we saw a substantial 18% increase in the number of homeowners ready to sell in the next 12 months–a higher proportion than we’ve seen in any quarter. We believe this big uptick in sentiment is a byproduct of two factors happening simultaneously: an eagerness to get back into the market and pent-up demand.