The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with recent protests and civil unrest, has had a profound impact on the economy and housing market. But some cities at the epicenter of the confluence of storms are already seeing signs of a recovery.
Realtor.com® debuted a new weekly Housing Recovery Index, which factors in home search traffic, median list prices, new listings, and median time on the market. The site compares the data to January 2020 market trends, a baseline for pre-coronavirus market growth. The higher a city’s value on the index, the stronger its recovery.
For the week ending June 6, realtor.com® reported its overall index at 88.8 nationwide, 11.2 points below the January baseline.
Eleven markets that saw some of the largest number of protests during the week ending June 6 saw an interrupted housing recovery. But six of these markets still saw slight increases in their weekly housing recovery index. Those metros are:
- Atlanta: +1.5 points
- Chicago: +4.7 points
- Cleveland: +3.3 points
- Los Angeles: +0.2 points
- Minneapolis: +0.3 points
- New York: +4.9 points
“The general sentiment from consumer surveys is that now is not a good time to sell a home because of COVID-19, economic uncertainty, and social unrest—but the data is saying the opposite,” says Danielle Hale, realtor.com®’s chief economist. “Home prices are back to their pre-COVID-19 pace, and we’re seeing listings spend slightly less time on the market than last week. But the housing market still needs more sellers in order to meet the surge in demand. Looking forward, if we don’t get the inventory we need, we’ll see prices rise even more and homes sell faster later this summer.”
Source: realtor.com®
