home sales to get boost from falling mortgage rates, rising inventory

home sales to get boost from falling mortgage rates, rising inventory

The national housing market may see its best home-buying season in years.

Trends like falling mortgage rates, rising home inventory and slowing home-price growth mean fewer bidding wars and more price cuts for buyers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now just over 4 percent, down from nearly 5 percent last year, the Journal reports. Meanwhile, home-price growth has slowed for 10 consecutive months, rising 4 percent year over year, compared to 6 percent last year. Additionally, inventory has been rising, up 7 percent from a low in December, 2017.

“It’s been a rough go for home buyers since the bottom of the housing market and there are signs we’re entering a period of normalcy,” Ralph McLaughlin, deputy chief economist at CoreLogic Inc, told the Journal.

However, the rise in inventory may be a symptom of another problem. Economists said that more inventory may not be the result of more owners listing, but of homes taking longer to sell.

Equally, despite slowing home-price growth prices are still high, up 50 percent since 2012. Homes sales were down 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, making it the weakest year of sales since 2015.

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