There has been shortages of consumer goods including cars, food, and you guessed it- houses. For instance the median sales price of single family homes sold last month in Harris County is $300,000, a 17.65% increase, compared to July 2020, in which the median price that sold was $255,000.
The million dollar question is if the real estate market has reached its apex and are we foreseeing any slow down? The answer is yes according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. Danielle Hale, chief economist of Realtor.com®, corroborates that the housing market is starting to cool, because buyers are taking a break because they are exhausted of entering into a bidding war due to the ubiquitous of multiple offer situations. Ali Wolf, chief economist at Zonda, states it's "a buyer's protest" in which buyers are sitting at the sidelines and are patiently waiting for home prices to cool.
Since employers are requires that workers must commute back to the office, Zandi notes that "The surge in demand created by the work-from-anywhere phenomenon is starting to fade." In addition, families will not require as much space as children are going back to in-person schooling and gyms are reopening.
School being out has caused a summer slump with people going on vacation, visiting family or spending the weekend at the beach instead of visiting an open house.
With only 50% of the population in the United States fully vaccinated with the Covid shot, there is an increase in worries of infectiousness and severity of the Delta variant. However, Mark Zandi provides relief by stating that “I don’t think delta is going to dent the housing market unless it starts to elude our vaccinations to the point where we start self-quarantining and schools start shutting down and we go backward on the reopenings."