According to Curbed, predictions from major industry players about what happens to the housing market post COVID-19 are starting to emerge. Interest rates are at rock bottom, listings have fallen and sales are off 9% nationwide per Redfin. Academic and real estate consultant Mike DelPrete looked a new home listings data for five markets including New York City, Portland, Austin, Seattle, and California’s East Bay, which includes Oakland and Berkeley. He posits that listings bottom out a week after sheltering in place, and stay at that bottom for 3 to 4 weeks before gradually starting to rise.
This suggests that the housing market recovery on a graph would be shaped like a checkmark—a sharp immediate decline to a bottom and then a slow recovery back to pre-pandemic levels. According to DelPrete, New York City is currently still at the bottom point, while Seattle, Austin, and the East Bay have started to move up in terms of new listings.
Pageview data from Zillow seems to support this general theory. When the pandemic hit, Zillow saw a 19 percent year-over-year drop in pageviews nationally on March 22. As of April 15, the seven-day trailing average for pageviews nationally was up year-over-year by 18 percent. This suggests the buyers and sellers are resuming their home search and will be ready to buy and sell again when quarantines lift.
But Zillow pageview data varies across markets. In New York City, one of the hardest hit cities in the world, pageviews are currently still down by 2 percent year-over-year. But Austin is up 35 percent year-over-year, Los Angeles is up 32 percent, and Houston is up a whopping 56 percent. This suggests that cities with big year-over-year jumps have pent up demand for housing.
