Selling season is here...

Overall, the supply of homes is dropping and buyer interest is rising.

In March, we had 1,069 new homes available for sale. That's a 6.5% increase from January.

That's also a 101% decrease from this past June and the lowest March inventory since 2018.

Typically this time of the year, inventory rises by 23% from January.

Buyers are waiting for more homes to come to the market and when they do, if they are in good shape and priced with energy, they will get plenty of buyer traffic and interest.

Sales have increased 116% since January to 921 homes in escrow. A staggering 86% absorption rate, meaning almost 9 out of every 10 homes that hit the market are selling.

As you can see from this data, homeowners aren’t rushing to sell because primary residence homeowners don’t act like leveraged stock traders, nor are they afraid of life, like the crazy housing crash YouTube people.

That unwillingness to sell hampers inventory even further.

If rates remain where they are or go lower, demand will continue to rise along with a HOPEFULLY seasonal increase in the supply of inventory which usually peaks in the summer.

The amount of time on the market has lowered from an average of 35 days in January to 25 days. That's the lowest level it's been since last June.

Buyers are seeing higher traffic at open houses, multiple offers, and sales prices above asking.

However, it is NOT due to high demand as mortgage rates are subduing demand … instead the competition is a DIRECT result of not enough new sellers and a lack of true inventory.

While sellers have the upper hand, today is NOT yet the same hot seller’s market of June 2020 to May 2022.

My advice to you is to not overprice your home, multiple offers may be back for some but not for all.

It will benefit you most to be realistic about condition, location, upgrades, amenities, and age ….

Which will result in pricing at fair market value and subsequent traffic and interest in your listing.

This upcoming month I am going to be paying very close attention to two things:

1 - How high sales to list prices continue to trend in relation to market values

2 - Will inventory start to grow to healthier levels as we approach the summer

Thank you for tuning into my April real estate update, if you’re thinking of buying or selling, I’d love to meet with you to discuss your goals, come up with a plan and get to work for you.