Big Numbers In The Housing Market

Sioux Falls housing market dipped a little in the recession, but it's coming back like gangbusters. Sales are skyrocketing and there's actually a shortage of homes for sale. 

Kelli Zimmer spends a lot of time browsing through home listings these days. She teaches a class for first time home buyers and has put her own house up for sale. She's hoping to find another one in the fastest selling price points under $200,000.

"If there's a shortage of inventory that means people are fighting to get that house. I've seen it first hand from teaching it. So I might be fighting more to get that home or pay a little more in the purchase price,” Zimmer said.

"We have a shortage right now. There is an extreme shortage of inventory," Brandon Martens of the Realtor Association of the Sioux Empire said.

The months supply of homes on the market is down by 34 percent. But it's the number of closed sales that are shocking even those who sell houses everyday. In January, that number jumped 88 percent from a year earlier.

"That means November and December was really busy; we're talking over the holidays. So these are things that were happening in the slowest; what we classify as the slowest time of the year. And to have that much business and that much closings happening, that just shows what 2013 is made of," Martens said.

Martens is expecting that rising sales, prices and less inventory should lead to a boom in new construction spec homes.

"That's what coming. It has to happen. Because with lack of inventory you need properties to sell," Martens said.

And as long as interest rates remain low, this booming market is expected to last.

"Rates are crazy; rates are extremely low; when it comes to that it's a buyers market because you can get cheap money. But when it comes to sellers there's a lack of inventory, which means get your house on the market because it will sell" Martens said.

And sell for more; the median sales price rose nine percent in January to $144,000 in Sioux Falls.