Real estate agent Rick Gehrke wrote up a listing for a house in Kuna on Sunday night, normally a slow time in the real estate world.
Not for that year-and-a-half-old property in the Mineral Springs subdivision near West Deer Flat Road.
"Within an hour I had an over-full price offer, sight unseen," said Gehrke, an agent with Remax Executives in Nampa who sells in both Ada and Canyon counties. "And for $450,000, in Kuna. The reason they did that was because they had missed out on four other houses."
After two months of declines in the coronavirus pandemic, the Ada County housing market rebounded in June with a 3.4% increase in homes sold compared with June 2019.
The median home sales price of $375,000 set a record, breaking April's mark by $100, according to a report from the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service.
Canyon County's median sales price set a record, too -- for the fifth month in a row. June's median was $287,900, up from $277,537 in May.
June sales in Ada County included 785 existing homes and 362 new ones. The combined total of 1,147 was up 312 from May.
Buyers had been scared off by the pandemic, which temporarily put a stop to open houses and personal interactions while the state was in a lockdown. Sales rose as businesses reopened and buyers could walk through houses again.
July is expected to bring robust sales, too. The number of homes with sales pending, 2,040, is nearly 300 more than in the same month a year ago.
"This rebound in closed and pending sales was due to pent-up buyer demand and the fact that our market was strong before the pandemic hit our region," Michelle Bailey, president of Boise Regional Realtors and an agent with Keller Williams Realty, said in a news release.
The offer on the Kuna house came from a couple who rent a house in Meridian. They asked their agent to keep an eye on any homes listed in Mineral Springs, Gehrke said.
Gehrke said demand is high in all price ranges. He said the pandemic has just increased demand.
"People have been waiting for three or four months because of the COVID-19 to get out there and buy a house," Gehrke said. "And when you combine low interest rates with pent-up demand and no inventory, we're looking at a perfect storm."
On Thursday, Freddie Mac reported the average rate on a
The number of available homes is down 44% from a year ago. There were 977 homes listed last month, compared with 1,750 in June 2019. That's the lowest number since the Realtors group began tracking inventory in January 2016.
The listings provide only one month's worth of inventory at the current sales rate, which heavily favors sellers. A balanced market, which favors neither sellers or buyers, has a four- to six-month supply of houses.
"Inventory is needed across the board, but demand is especially high for existing homes," Bailey said.
Only 438 existing homes were listed for sale, fewer than half the 891 homes listed in June 2019. Existing homes stayed on the market for an average of 20 days before getting sold in June. Costlier new homes took 59 days.
Meanwhile, Gehrke said he has another house he's looking to list, probably on Friday.
"I'm going to list it for probably $10,000 over what it should sell for," he said. "I'm predicting I'll get multiple offers over that full price."
