REALTORS® Reported The REALTORS® Buyer Traffic Index registered at 59 in January 2016 (51 in December 2015; 56 in January 2015). Meanwhile, supply conditions remained by and large tight in many areas. The REALTORS® Seller Traffic Index registered at 40 (38 in December 2015; 41 in January 2015). An index below 50 indicates that more respondents viewed traffic conditions as “weak” rather than “strong.”
The gap in demand and supply has led to strong price growth against modest gains in income, making a home purchase increasingly less affordable. The national median existing single-family home price in the fourth quarter of 2015 was $222,700, up 6.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2014 ($208,400). For all of 2015, an average of 89 percent of measured metro areas saw increasing home prices, up from the averages in 2014 (83 percent) and 2013 (88 percent).
