It’s been a year. One whole year. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the “novel coronavirus” a pandemic, setting off a cascade of stay-at-home orders by state and local governments across the U.S. Little did we guess that in 2021, the death toll would have reached 529,000, and many of us would still be working from home while our kids Zoomed into their classrooms nearby.
The past year has been a crazy roller-coaster ride for real estate as well, with shutdowns affecting different places in different ways. Across the board, home buying became a priority—demand for housing shot up even as the inventory of homes for sale shrank, pushing up prices by 14.3% year over year, realtor.com® data show.
