The National Association of Realtors likes to collect data. Every once in awhile, some of that data comes across my desktop. And I like to share some of that information with you, the readers of my blog post.
An item that came across my desktop today was about the median time that a family stays in their home. This used to be an average of 6 years.
But starting in 2008 that time frame has been creeping up. In 2011 it reached nine years and has been staying between 9 and 10 years since. It’s an increase of almost 50%.
So why are people staying in those homes longer? A lot of the homeowners are stuck in their home. When the housing prices hit a peak in the mid-2000s, and then took a drop, many homeowners were in a negative equity situation. That means that their mortgage amount was higher than the house was worth. So unless they have the extra cash available, they couldn’t sell their house.
Now if you don’t need to sell your house that’s not a problem. But if they did need to sell, for whatever reason, maybe a job transfer or they just didn’t have the money to keep up the payments, then they had to go into the short sale type situation.
But now home prices have risen, making a possible for many people to sell their home and move into something nicer, Today we have an improved economy, and this is good for the housing market.
Many families are in a house which is not suitable for them anymore at this time. It could be empty nesters living in the Old Colonial, or a Millennial couple living in the small condo that no suits their family. These homeowners are already to make a move, and if you didn’t have such a shortage of available housing inventory they probably would.