More homeowners are staying put in their residences longer, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. In 2008, the median time homeowners stayed at the same address was six years; in 2014, that surged to 10 years. “I’m seeing people bottled up in their homes because they have nowhere to move to,” says Dowell Myers, an urban planning and demography professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “We have burgeoning demand and an insufficient supply of homes for sale, which creates gridlock.” But in markets that have fully recovered since the Great Recession and where homeowners have equity for the first time, you may start to see a “surge in sellers as people try to act on their long-delayed plans to move on,” Myers says.
Realtor.com®’s research team identified the markets where homeowners are selling in record time. They looked at homes sold over the past 12 months in the 100 largest metros and then compared those sales with their previous ones, dating back to 2000. From there, they calculated the average number of months that homes were owned between sales. (The survey included one metro per state for geographic diversity.)
The following cities are where homeowners are staying put the least:
- Providence, R.I.: 33 months (the average time between sales)
- Cape Coral, Fla. 35 months
- Greenville, S.C.: 36 months
- New Orleans: 44 months
- Madison, Wis.: 47 months
- Grand Rapids, Mich.: 51 months
- El Paso, Texas: 99 months (the average time between sales)
- Albuquerque, N.M.: 98 months
- Oxnard, Calif.: 97 months
- Greensboro, N.C.: 97 months
- Philadelphia: 96 months
- Cleveland: 95 months
Source:
“Cities Where People Own Their Homes the Longest—and Those Where They Pack Up Fast,” realtor.com® (July 30, 2018)
