I stayed at an Airbnb recently And I was curious what the actual value of it was so I looked it up on Zillow. Sold in 2015 for 350k, sold again in 2022 for $750k, now listed for sale 1.2 million. It’s a cabin in North Carolina, literally nothing special. I remember back before 2020 there was tons of mountain and cabins and homes and stuff like that anywhere from 2:50 to 500K. Now you won’t find a single one less than 800k…
Regular homes are just as bad. I’m seeing homes in my area that sold for around $200 to 300K in 2019, now they are 500k and above. I don’t understand how this makes any sense? Salaries were not doubled, but somehow the price of all homes are now twice as much. Is this some sort of cost fixing scheme by the real estate industry to just drive up the price of homes and double them or something? Because it doesn’t really make sense to me I guess.
At 1.2 million, it’s overpriced. They’ve likely priced it that way because it’s now an Airbnb - “look at all the income you’ll make by buying this property!” But what really changed in the two years they owned it? Did they remodel the whole place? Possibly, but probably not enough to warrant adding $550k to the price. This house is now an investment, not a place to live.
I have noticed a particular attitude with a lot of sellers, though. They think because other sellers have been having great windfalls that they can just list for any high amount and it’ll work for them too. Those are the ones that sit, and they’re usually priced at 1m or more.
The homes flying off the shelves, so to speak, are the starter homes. You have both younger and older generations fighting for the same small affordable homes, and developers generally aren’t building as many of those.