Sellers seeing high price gain on homes

Sellers in the final quarter of 2017 saw the highest average home price gain in more than a decade.

The average home price gain of $54,000 was an increase of $268 from the third quarter of 2017, according to ATTOM Data Solutions’Year-End and Q4 2017 U.S. Home Sales Report. The average seller received nearly 30 percent return on investment compared to what they purchased their home for, up 0.9 percent from the previous quarter.

In Pennsylvania, the Lancaster area had the highest ROI, with the average seller profiting $37,000, a return of 25.5 percent.

Home prices also reached a new peak, with the median home price costing $235,000 in 2017, an increase of 8.3 percent from the previous year. In the commonwealth, Pittsburgh was the metro with the highest home price appreciation, however, the average median price for a home there was $140,000, nearly $100,000 less than the national average.

“It’s the most profitable time to sell a home in more than 10 years, yet homeowners are staying put longer than we’ve ever seen,” said Daren Blomquist, senior vice president at ATTOM Data Solutions in a release.

The report found that homeowners who sold their homes in the last quarter of 2017 had owned their homes for an average of 8.18 years, an increase from 8.12 years in the third quarter and up from 7.78 years from the last quarter of 2016.

In the fourth quarter, distressed sales hit a decade low, making up only 14 percent of sales, down 24.6 percent from its peak in 2011. In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia had the highest level of distressed sales at 23.8 percent.