New report: More Iowa homes are for sale

ROCK ISLAND, Illinois — Spring is blooming in the Quad Cities but not necessarily booming in the housing market. The report by the Iowa Association of Realtors showed an uptick of inventory in March with more than 3,700 new listings. That’s an eight percent increase from a year ago.

According to a local Realtor Carie Nesbitt at Mel Foster Co., who is also the director of talent acquisition and agent development, says the Quad Cities, for the most part, mirrors those statistics from the Iowa Association of Realtors. However, “We have an uptick in buyers,” Nesbitt said. “We have more inventory than last year. We are still seeing that uptick in buyers so we’re in that scenario of supply and demand.”

Covid, higher interest rates, and inflation kept a lot of people from buying homes in the last few years, but Nesbitt says she’s seeing a shift.

“We have a lot of buyers jumping back into the market and a lot of that having to do with the stabilization of interest rates,” Nesbitt said.

Right now, the interest rate for a 30-year mortgage is around seven percent. Just a couple of years ago, it was around three percent. It’s predicted that rates could drop one-to-two percent in the next six months to a year. David Nelson, the CEO of NelsonCorp Wealth Management, says that could lead to another home-buying challenge.

“The problem is often times when rates come down, the prices can go up,” he said. “It’s a teeter-totter typically, but it hasn’t happened this time,” Nelson said. “My instinct would be to probably wait. I would say wait probably 12 months. Chances are you are going to get a much more competitive rate then you are now.”

Currently, the median price for home sales in the Iowa Quad Cities is $287,000 and $173,000 on the Illinois side. Nesbitt also checked out Multiple Listing Services (MLS). The real estate portal showed there are currently 149 single family homes on the market for sale in Davenport and 104 in Bettendorf.

On the Illinois side of the Quad Cities, Rock Island has 51 homes available. Moline has 36 and East Moline has 37. According to Mel Foster’s listings, for single family homes under $200,000, there are 49 homes active for sale in Davenport, and just two in Bettendorf.

For more information on the Iowa housing market, click here .

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