Rising costs of rentals causes more people to buy homes

COLUMBUS Miss. (WCBI) For a number of years, there has been an up-and-down trend for realtors. Crye Leike Realtors Brandon Shaw, and associate broker Rick Mcgill said there are several reasons why the housing market has changed

“It used to be where you would have a buyer come in and it would be more traditional where you would have an appointment with the buyer. When COVID hit, it went to a lot of virtual tours, a lot of online shopping, and a lot of the good stuff. Technology really evolved the real estate industry; I think the biggest deal is that technology. A lot of vendors still work from home now because they got so used to that,” said Brandon Shaw (Cry Leike Realtor)

” We went through where we had the real low rates. Rates have come back up, although they have fallen back down in the last couple of months. Home buyers are much more educated now, there is so much knowledge out there,” said Rick Mcgill (Cry Leike Associate Broker)

According to data from rent.com, the median price for rent in Mississippi has increased by almost 14 percent. Shaw and McGill said this is a big reason why more people are moving into homes.

“I have several clients now that are in leases, and they do not want to renew leases because they see that they can have their own place, have land, and with property value going up every year basically and with the industry growth, people are wanting to get out of those apartments because they see that they can have a mortgage rate cheaper than their apartment rent,” said Shaw

“Number one, rent has gone up because there is not much new building going on. So people that are wanting to buy, are having to buy existing homes. Those existing homes, even with the increase in the interest rate, can be owned as cheaply as you can rent in this area right now. It is much better to own because every payment you make, it is like making it into a savings account because you have equity built up to that,” said Mcgill

While news about home loan interest rates has improved, houses are still difficult to find. Mcgill says new and unexpected things are happening in the Columbus housing market

“I have been doing this for over 45 years, and I am seeing more growth right now than I have ever seen, and I am very proud of this area,” said Mcgill

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