A recent analysis of nationwide home sales performed by The New York Times and DataQuick Information Systems show that while homes sales have fallen in the market’s middle and bottom segments, the high-end US real estate market is doing just fine.
This national trend has gone largely unnoticed because Washington as well as the National Association of Realtors – the main sources of housing data – don’t normally report statistics for different price segments, but the new analysis, based on nationwide real estate activity, found that sales of homes in the top 5 percent of the market have been rising in many cities – often even selling at above-asking prices – contrary to what happened to the rest of the market.
The reason for this trend is that affluent families have been getting richer and are therefore spending some if their money in high-end real estate properties. In addition, wealthy foreign investors are trying to take advantage of a weakening U.S. dollar by buying large U.S. homes today, counting that the reverse currency trend in the years to come will give additional value to their investments. Another consideration is that affluent buyers are not particularly affected by rising interest rates and mortgage related problems, unlike low-income or middle-class ones.
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