Good morning, fellow real estate data nerds!

As of 21 Oct 2023, here are the market’s vital stats for single family homes (SFH):

Let’s unpack these a bit. How we read this is: the average closed price for the month of October is $565K, median is $485K. Averages days on market are 39.6 and median is 25. The average home is closing at 98.61% of the list price at the time of closing. But prices are being dropped 3.86% on average on those listed homes. An easier way to say that is home prices are being dropped almost 4% to get to closing.

We are selling at 59.71% the volume we were this time last here, or a drop of 40.29%. Home prices are projected to rise 1.68% in the next couple of weeks (the FPVI is a measure of the expected closing prices of the homes currently under contract relative to what’s closed in the last 30 days).

Finally, there are 3.37 months worth of homes on the market right now, selling at an average of 1.95% down from the peak in May 2022. A visual here on that:

This graph shows the 14 day rolling average of closed prices over the last three years. We peaked in May 2022, then dropped. We have reclaimed then dropped again a couple of times. We are now within 2% of the peak of pricing again.

Wait, what? How is this happening in a market of high rates?

It might seem counterintuitive but what’s happening is those who can buy are still buying. And inventory is still so low, it’s not having a significant impact on pricing, on the average.

Another thing to consider: we are only counting the winners. We have had 544 withdrawn and expired listings in the last 90 days vs 251 in the same timeframe last year. In the last 30 days, there have been 246 withdrawn and expired vs 132 in the same time last year. With 931 homes closed in the last 30 days, the 246 withdrawn or expired represents 26% of the numbers in the sold market.

The TLDR; a large portion of the sales market is not moving. This will impact the market sooner rather than later, as these sellers either have to rent, potentially at a loss, come back on the market at a reduced price or potentially enter foreclosure.