July turned out to be a roller coaster month for real estate as the long-awaited day of reckoning came: The era of historically low interest rates is over.

Additionally, inventory levels continued to increase – we are up nearly double the number of homes for sale since the beginning of the year.  Also, home prices have risen and sales slowed slightly all resulting in a hectic month for residential sales.  Oh yeah, throw in a long holiday weekend so some sellers are a little anxious today about their home sale situation.

So the biggest question is…what was the impact of rising rates?

• It knocked some buyers out of the home purchasing arena as they could no longer qualify.
• Some buyers are waiting to see if the rates will come back down so they are on the fence.
• Higher prices coupled with higher rates have made some people uncomfortable with the elevated payments and don’t want to make a move at this time.

How do we look going forward into August…. Houses will sell!

• Existing home sales are expected to rise more than 8% for the remainder of the year.  As our prices continue to rise, albeit at slower pace than the rest of the major metropolitan areas as reported by Case-Shiller – home prices in the 20 biggest cities rose 2.4 percent from April to May, with a 2 percent monthly gain in the Washington market. 
• Sellers in our area will continue to take advantage of the gain in equity, especially closer into Washington and put their houses up for sale giving us a more balanced market between buyers and sellers.
• Interest rates will remain stable and we won’t have the drastic increases we experienced over the last two months bringing some of the buyers back into the market.

So overall, I believe we will have a good August, not great, but that is typical for this time of the year.

If you have any additional questions or concerns about your particular situation, feel free to call me (703) 652-5777.

Scott MacDonald

RE/MAX Gateway, LLC