The housing market is heavily dependent on two main factors; supply and demand. Both play a major role in determining an equilibrium price for both sellers and buyers in the real estate market.
Residents, or the general population of individuals, place significant reliance on financial institutions to provide sources of capital i.e mortgages, to fund their purchases of homes. The rate of interest charged by these organisations in turn gives buyers (consumers) purchasing power, creating demand.
Supply is made up of the number of houses in the market, and consequently, of these, the number of houses which are up for sale. As the prices of houses for sale increases, the demand for purchase of these properties decreases. Conversely, the lower price, the higher the demand. Once the market reaches an equilibrium point, to which buyers and sellers form an agreement, houses are sold accordingly. An underlying factor to consider is the cost of construction, which impacts producers, or suppliers in this instance, and thus the number of homes for sale, and the expected profit sellers hope to achieve.
The simulated graph highlights the common scenario within the housing market, to which we see that as price increases, the total number for houses for sale decreases, generating an opposite slope to the price. As the price for houses increases, the demand for the houses decreases and vice versa. The equilibrium is evident at time 14 whereby the price of houses and the number of houses for sale overlaps which in turn creates a market to which both buyers and sellers are happy.
