Well, whether you’re searching for homes in nine hills or anywhere in Orange County, in fact, pretty much anywhere nationwide as of January 20, 2022.

Today, I checked the multiple listing service of which I’m a member and there are only nine homes for sale. Usually, there are about 150-280 homes for sale in a normal market. But as of today, there are only nine if you look at Orange County, all of Orange County as of today, January 20, 2022. There are only 1073 homes for sale, which is very, very low. These are historic lows. I’ve never seen anything like this and I’m not sure if anybody saw this type of a market so to understand this market, what does that mean when the inventory is so low? Well, it only means one thing which is good for the sellers. Not good for the buyers, which means low inventory means there are multiple offers on a lot of homes, multiple bids homes selling over asking price Home Selling within two or three or four days, which means the prices are selling over. I wrote an offer in the weekend in the city of orange on a house or a townhouse right next to Anaheim Hills, it was listed for approximately $725,000. I’m not going to give away the exact numbers. It was listed for  $725,000 three bedrooms, two baths with some decent view of the hills. I showed it to my buyers and were excited we wrote an offer. Lo and behold, my buyers did not get it for the  $725,000 homes sold for $865,000. There were five cash offers one of the cash buyers bought, no contingencies, no appraisal, no repairs, no loans, and the seller could stay in the house for up to 90 days wrote another offer in the city of orange again.

I took them to Yorba Linda in orange, this house that we saw was listed for $1.1M, it ended up selling close to one point for $300,000 over list price. So this trend seems like it’s going to continue in Orange County nationwide, which means the prices are going to go up at least in 2022. The question is, why are we in this situation and how long are we going to be in this situation type market, no homes to see asking or giving the sellers what they want. And the buyers are just very nervous, very confused to see what to do. So here are some reasons why we are in this type of situation. 

Reason no. 1: We are at historic low-interest rates for the last year, a year and a half. We went even under 3% for a 30 year fixed mortgage. Even right now we are under 3.5%. So you can buy more houses with a lower interest rate. 

Reason no. 2: Nationwide, especially in Orange County, the builders cannot keep up with the normal housing demand. So by the time there is a demand for 6 million homes nationwide, the builders are not building enough homes because there are resale homes, but we still need to build new homes. So there is a construction delay. So that’s another reason. The third reason, just like the home prices have gone up since 2012 and escalated since 2018. Similarly, the rents in Orange County and nationwide in Orange County, have gone up an average of 7% in the last two or three years. So if you are paying $2,500 Rent right now, and if you get evicted.

One of my clients just got evicted from a $2,500 two bedroom, two bath townhouse because the sellers are gonna sell it and now I’m looking for a rental for them in the similar kind of rental for $3500 to $4,000 a month. So the rental rates are very high. So why should you pay $4000, $5000, $6000 A month rent if you can pay a mortgage for the same amount and get tax write-offs depreciation and build equity and have appreciation on the house also, as of 2019, due to the pandemic that threw off the whole housing market, and pretty much the economy and a lot of the sellers don’t want to sell or don’t want to move because they’re scared of what might happen.

So that’s another reason why sellers are not moving because they’re nervous because of the pandemic. Also, if you notice in the last four or five years, the stock market has done very well. And there’s a lot of money out there despite the fact we hear that the pandemic has affected everything. There are no jobs out there. There’s a lot of money out there. There’s a lot of stock money out there. There’s foreign money coming in which all of these reasons have created a big demand for housing. When there’s a big demand and a shortage of homes, only one thing happens: prices go up, which means that in 2022, prices are still going to go up. The predictions were anywhere from 5% to 6%. I think it’s going to go up 10% in 2022, at least in Orange County, so this market is still hot, and take advantage if you’re a seller, you can get a higher price. And if you’re a buyer, you can still take advantage because you get the low-interest rate. You don’t pay four or 5000 months rent instead, you can buy a house and start appreciating that building equity heavy house appreciating the long term..