SPRINGDALE, Ark. — The average Northwest Arkansas Home price is up to nearly 400 thousand dollars, up 26.8% from the first half of last year, according to the new ARVEST Skyline Report.
Realtors say more people are moving in from large metropolitan areas pushing demand higher, forcing some to live further from city centers.
"Now that is changing, you know, sort of the secret is out, and people want to be in Northwest Arkansas," said realtor Tara Limbird. "But it kind of goes back to that number one role in real estate is location, location, location, if you're in the heartbeat of you know, Bentonville, Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville, you're going to pay a premium price."
Experts say it's time to build more houses, which the report shows more new constructions have started in the past year than in previous. They say it may be difficult with higher costs.
"I can't tell you how many people we've talked to about selling their house, but they've all said the same thing," said Limbird. "Tara, I would love to sell my house but where would I go."
The rental market is also competitive as the skyline report shows that multi family vacancy rate is just over 2%
"when you decrease the demand on affordable housing, because people are out of the affordability range, you in fact push those to the rental market, that they're in the chance and constrains the rental market, which obviously causes it to go up," said Kent Turner of Northwest Arkansas Board of Realtors.
"We all kind of have to retrain our brain, including agents, buyers and sellers on what a normal healthy market looks like," said Limbird. "And that some of these changes that are happening are not necessarily bad changes. It just that pendulum is shifting in and hopefully we'll find more of a balanced and neutral market."
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