PRESIDENT’S COLUMN
March 15, 2015 IN THIS ISSUE
Leah Cox is president of the Waco Association of Realtors and is associated with Kelly, Realtors
Open House .......... Pg. 2 Home Tours .......... Pg. 4 Classifieds ............. Pg. 5
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Spring is coming, and these 20 markets are heating up You wouldn’t know it from the weather in the Northeast (and Kentucky and the Midwest), but the housing market has been heating up the past few weeks. While most real estate analysts are still processing January data on home sales and digesting price reports from December, here at realtor.com® we’ve already started digging into our site’s data on February—and it’s looking good. “The biggest macro trend is that we’re finally seeing inventory grow,” said Jonathan Smoke, our chief economist. And that really is big—tight supply coupled with growing demand has driven up prices in previous months. In February, though, there were significantly more homes for sale than one year before. “This is a very important trend for many reasons—in particular, because it will help keep prices at a more moderate level down the road,” Smoke said. Affordability has become a key concern in the real estate
Higher inventory and demand in February should lead to more closings in March
market recently. Many would-be firsttime buyers have found themselves locked out of the market because of high prices and tight lending restrictions. One of the main reasons that more homes are going on the market now, Smoke said, is that homeowners have been encouraged by the current higher prices— but those will level out as supply rises to meet demand. After sifting through February data and website traffic, Smoke determined that the following 20 markets are the hottest in the country right now, based on the ratio of
listing views to the number of listings: 1. Waco, TX 2. Dallas-Fort WorthArlington, TX 3. Santa Rosa, CA 4. Denver-AuroraLakewood, CO 5. Vallejo-Fairfield, CA 6. Ann Arbor, MI 7. Fort Wayne, IN 8. Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA 9. Charleston, WV 10. San Luis Obispo et al, CA 11. Columbus, OH 12. Boulder, CO 13. Detroit-WarrenDearborn, MI 14. Hartford-West Hartford et al, CT 15. ManchesterNashua, NH 16. San FranciscoOakland et al, CA
17. San DiegoCarlsbad, CA 18. Charleston-North Charleston, SC 19. Toledo, OH 20. BostonCambridge-Newton, MA-NH You know how they say April showers bring May flowers? Well, higher inventory and demand in February should lead to more closings in March. Yeah, we know it’s not as catchy as the original, but hey, we’re real estate geeks, not Roman orators.
coming in april 2015
15014 SENDERO LN
DA OP YS EN AW 7 EE K
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McLennan County
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Woodway
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Blue Cut Ranch
Paula Guthrie
254.776.7000
Coldwell Banker Jim Stewart, Realtors
or
254.709.9908
254.749.8362