Home Purchase Negotiations Favor Missouri Mortgage Applicants
Negotiating a home purchase is a bit like playing poker. This spring, with about 18,000 houses on the Kansas City market, the cards favor buyers.
Not that you’ll be able to bluff someone who is selling a home at the right price to fold and take whatever you offer. But Missouri housing market professionals say you have a good shot at winning some extras, such as the seller covering the closing cost or throwing in an extra appliance or two.
Even better for buyers: mortgage rates are dropping again, to their lowest levels in more than a year.
“When we say it’s a buyers market, that gives them more confidence going in,” said Kathy Copeland, president of the Kansas City Regional Association of Realtors. “With the Kansas City market, we’ve never had a bust or boom, we’ve made corrections. There’s additional inventory that will give buyers lots of different selection. They have more opportunities and choices than before.”
About 30 percent of the homes on the market are new, the hangover from the recent building boom when builders were cranking out 10,000 or more houses annually. Builders have hit the brakes hard, and housing starts are off by about half from the pace set last year. Even so, it will take some time for that swollen inventory to return to balance.
According to the latest data from the Realtors association, the area’s housing inventory stood at 18,133 homes in January. Although the first of the year is historically slow for sellers, the inventory overhang is higher than the 17,289 homes in inventory the same time a year ago. Home mortgage brokers are seeing less and less business.
While some sellers are suffering, one real estate observer said a softening housing market offers a bargain-hunters bonanza for opportunistic Missouri mortgage borrowers.
“Starts are way down, as they should be,” said John Moffitt of Coldwell Banker Moffitt. “But if somebody buys a house this spring they’ll be happy they did. There’s going to be at least a 5 to 10 percent increase when more houses start being built because of increased construction costs.”
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