Buyers Feeling Blue

Can’t look at one more fixer-upper? Tired of bidding wars on every half-decent home that comes on the market? Wondering when, if ever, prices will go down, or at least level off, in Greater Boston?

Wondering if we have gone from global warming to a new ice age?

If so, you’ve got a bad case of the home-buyer blues, with Boston area house hunters particularly vulnerable to this new malady, a new report finds.

Confidence in the housing market among Boston area buyers is falling, according to a newreport out by Zillow and is now somewhat below the national average.

Boston’s score on Zillow’s “housing confidence index” weighs in at 63.4, below the national average of 63.7.

Meanwhile, only 8 percent of Boston area renters want to buy in the next year, compared to 10 percent nationally.

By contrast, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Miami have the highest percentage of renters looking to buy.

Rising prices and a growing dearth of homes to actually look at are two likely suspects
here.

But Zillow is not the only one picking up on some increasingly negative vibes coming from home buyers as the spring market gets ready to kick off.

Only 25 percent of house hunters across the country think it is a good time to buy now, compared to 40 percent last year, Redfin reports.

OK, to borrow a popular line from Realtor trade groups, maybe it’s all the nasty weather out there that is getting buyers down.

However, while the wintry view outside the window doesn’t help, there is clearly much more to this story than that.