In an article posted on Slate over the weekend, Tim Harford explains that the house-price indices reported to the media are seasonally adjusted, because home prices predictably rise and fall at the beginning and end of summer.
Harford offers this summary of a yet-to-be-published paper by two London School of Economics professors, L. Rachel Ngai and Silvana Tenreyro, explaining the phenomenon:
Buyers slightly prefer to purchase houses in the summer, so house prices are slightly higher in the summer, so sellers prefer to put their houses on the market in the summer—and with more houses on the market, the market is thicker. That means that buyers are more likely to find the exact house they want and so are willing to pay more. With prices higher, more sellers are attracted into the summer market, and fewer will contemplate selling in the winter. And so on. The self-reinforcing process can produce a large gap between summer and winter prices.
Does that mean it makes more sense for buyers who are sitting on the fence to wait a couple more months? It depends where you’re looking. For example, when I spoke with Caryl Dillon about prices at The Elysian earlier this morning, she warned me that prices there will begin to climb soon (as is often the case with pre-construction pricing).
Harford mentions that the price surge was pretty weak this past spring: Does that mean the price drip going into the winter will be similarly weak, or that prices will drop precipitously?