Butler County Realtors deal with low stock of available homes
Looking to buy a home in Butler County? Take a number and get in line.
In the post-COVID-19 housing market, there aren’t enough homes available for everyone looking for one, and the ones that are available are shooting up in price.
Chuck Swidzinski, a Butler-based Realtor affiliated with Berkshire Hathaway, is among those tasked with selling those homes. In recent years, he and his team have had fewer and fewer to sell, and have had to sell them for higher and higher prices.
“For years and years, I've carried about 100 listings at a time,” Swidzinski said. “I think I have 48 listings right now. I've been doing this for 35 years. This is the first time we’ve ever been under 100 homes for sale.”
One of Swidzinski’s recent listings, a house on Highfield Road in Butler Township, was only on the market for four days before selling. During that time, it received four offers and eventually sold for well over its asking price of $229,000.
“The problem is that people are outbidding each other to get the houses,” Swidzinski said.
Another Berkshire Hathaway-affiliated Realtor — Jack Hutterer of the Hutterer, Stahl, & Kadyk team, based in Saxonburg — agrees that the stock of homes has been low in recent years. However, from his perspective, things could be starting to look up.
“In 2020 and ‘21, it was clearly a seller’s market. Prices were going up quickly, and people were getting great offers on their houses,” Hutterer said. “Things are coming back more to normal at this point.”
According to data from realtor.com, active housing listings across the United States stood at over 1.3 million in August 2017. By February 2022, due largely to the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic slowdown that followed, that number plummeted to under 350,000. By November 2023, the number of listings had bounced back over 750,000.
In Butler County, the number of active home listings has plummeted from 907 in October 2016 to 264 in January 2024, bottoming out with 148 in March 2022. Meanwhile, the median listing price has skyrocketed from $244,900 in December 2018 to $359,900 in January 2024.
Due to lower inventory, Butler County homes have stayed on the market for far less time in recent years, even with higher prices. In January 2018, the median home listing stayed on the market for 110 days. By August 2023, that time shrunk to 42 days.
But “inventory has slowly grown,” Hutterer said. “It’s still low, but it’s growing, so there are more houses for people to choose from.”
According to Swidzinski, all of Butler County is a hot market due to both its proximity to Pittsburgh and its lower taxes.
“Our taxes are about one and a half times lower than in Allegheny County,” Swidzinski said. “So people like the Butler area.”
Swidzinski believes there is a reason for the drop in listings.
“Eighty-eight percent of the people in the United States that have mortgages are refinanced, so they’re at 3% or lower in their interest rate,” Swidzinski said. “Well, now the interest rate is between 6% and 7%.”
Because of the rise in interest rates, people who purchased their homes at a lower rate may be more reluctant to sell their home. Conversely, when interest rates are lower, buyers are more willing to purchase homes, which leads prices to rise over time.
As of late February 2024, the Federal Reserve rate is at 7.866% for a 30-year fixed mortgage. However, experts predict that this will drop off slightly over the year, with the Mortgage Bankers Association predicting that rates will fall to 5.8% by the end of the year.
“There are some people who are sitting on the sideline waiting for interest rates to drop,” Hutterer said.
Because of the predicted drop in mortgage rates, Swidzinski has referred to the current state of the market as a “spring market” — a market where buying and selling activity is expected to go up in the near future.
“Now is a very good time to sell your house,” Swidzinski said. “As long as the interest rates keep going down ... I think that's going to really get more people moving.”
