From the APP:
Mortgage rates double. Here is why that hasn’t killed Jersey Shore home bidding wars
With mortgage rates rising to 22-year highs, the prospects for the sale of the house at 321 14th Ave. in Belmar could have dimmed. But within a week of going on the market, its owners had shown the home to nearly 60 prospective buyers and were left to decide among 10 written offers.
By the end of the process, the listing’s agent, Eric Bosniak with Coldwell Banker Realty in Rumson, said the big surprise wasn’t that the home sold above its asking price of $899,000, but that it didn’t receive even more offers given the interest.
“I feel that, yes, mortgage rates are ticking higher, but there’s still significant buyer demand with still limited inventory,” Bosniak said. “And here’s the kicker: limited good inventory.”
The conflicting data has puzzled real estate veterans, who can’t remember a set of conditions like this. It was only two years ago that home buyers and owners took advantage of record-low mortgage rates. Now, they seem frozen in place, leaving real estate agents and mortgage brokers to wait for rates to begin to decline and for the market the thaw.
Less clear is how long the head-scratching environment will last. And they wonder: If homes are getting above asking price despite high interest rates, what will happen to prices when rates fall?
“All of a sudden, rates go down to, say, the mid-5’s, well, then are you going to be bidding against 20 other people?” asked Kenneth Gunther, senior loan officer for NJ Lenders Corp., a mortgage banker in Shrewsbury. “So that’s the unknown question that I think about at night. … What is the market going to look like down the road?”
