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Increase in Home Sales Leads to Higher Prices

2016 appears to be a rosy year for the real estate market. Recent data reveals that there has been an increase in home sales over the course of a year.

According to Realtor.com, there has been an 11 percent increase in existing home sales from January 2015 to January 2016. There was also a 0.4 percent increase in sales made from December 2015 to January 2016.

This can be taken as a good sign that more people are becoming interested in buying their own homes. The rise in the percentage of sales in the real estate market is said to be due to the decrease in the unemployment rate.

The publication noted that 151,000 jobs were opened in January, which further helped decrease the unemployment rate for a period of 10 years. The said employment growth was still lower than last year's average, but this can translate to a 3 percent growth in home sales in 2016.

With the increase in home sales also comes the increase in demand. As the law of supply and demand dictates, this will result in higher median prices of houses in the real estate market.

According to the publication, this has led to a "tighter-than-tight supply." The National Association of Realtors (NAR) also estimates this to be four months in January, which means that the current available supply of houses for sale in the real estate market is only good for four months.

This would reportedly help encourage interested buyers to start looking into buying a home as early as now while there is still an available supply in the market. However, there are still ways in which you can get your dream home without bidding and getting outbid.

As previously reported here on Realty Today, median prices of newly constructed homes continue to drop.

This has led to an increase in the number of first-time homebuyers, as a newly constructed house also offers a lot of benefits such as skipping the bidding process and being assured that almost everything is brand new.


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