A new report out this week on the housing market in the Rochester area shows that for people who want to buy a home, a lack of inventory is still the main challenge they are facing.
According to the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors, sales of existing homes for the first quarter of this year were down 19% compared to the same quarter a year ago.
Mike O’Connor, who is president of the association, said there are still plenty of prospective home buyers out there, and inventory has risen a bit, but not enough to meet demand.
“The demand is as strong as ever; inventory is lower, although in the recent, I would say two weeks, it did increase somewhat,” said O’Connor. “We saw well over 100 houses hop on the market within a week and a half. And of course they all sold quickly.”
And even with mortgage rates climbing in recent months, topping 6% for many people, O’Connor said that doesn’t seem to have discouraged many home buyers.
“The interest rates have risen, and then they drop back a little bit, and they might go up a little bit more, but they’re still not high enough to really cause a problem for buyers,” said O’Connor.
The median sales price of a home in the Rochester area has continued to rise although O’Connor says that number has started to level off somewhat.
The report out on Thursday said that the median sales price in the region was $180,000 in the first quarter of 2023. That was up 2.9% compared to the first quarter of 2022, but down from the annual median sales price figure of $200,000 for all of last year.
For 2022 overall, sales of existing homes in the Rochester area were down 10.5% compared to 2021.
