Many real estate professionals don’t foresee a significant drop in home prices from the COVID-19 pandemic, and certainly not to the degree of the Great Recession’s impact on the housing market. For residential property prices over the next 12 months, 38% of more than 4,000 REALTORS® say they expect prices to increase and 23% expect prices to remain stable, according to the March 2020 REALTORS® Confidence Index Survey, a monthly survey of real estate transactions conducted by the National Association of REALTORS®.
“Although the pandemic continues to be a major disruption in regards to the timing of home sales, home prices have been holding up well,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement following a report on pending home sales in March. “In fact, due to the ongoing housing shortage, home prices are likely to squeeze out a gain in 2020 to a new record high.”
Home prices were still rising across the country as the pandemic widened in scope in the U.S. in March. As of March, the median home sales price increased 8% year over year to $282,500, according to NAR.
The following chart compares February to March 2020 REALTOR® member projections on home prices.
“Prices have held up due to a combination of measures under the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed plus the additional $484 billion funding passed April 23 to pay for unemployment insurance benefit claims and payroll assistance for small businesses,” Scholastica Cororaton, a research economist for NAR, notes on the association’s Economists’ Outlook blog.
The median list prices in several markets are still up compared to a year ago, according to realtor.com® data. For example, in Los Angeles, the median list price is up 16% compared to a year ago, while in Las Vegas and Denver, median listing prices are up by 3.6% and 3.5%, respectively, compared to a year ago. In the New York-New Jersey area, which has accounted for the largest share of coronavirus cases in the country, median listing prices are still up from one year ago by 2.9%.
As of April 18, 58 of the 100 largest metros were still seeing higher median listing prices when compared to a year prior, according to realtor.com® data. Properties were staying on the market longer—six more days during the week of April 18 compared to April 2019.
But markets like Washington, D.C., were seeing median list prices up by 4.4% the week of April 18 compared to a year prior.
