Weekly Market Activity Report
Weekly Market Activity Report
“How’s the Market?” (Elevator Edition): New listings remain subdued with 15 weeks in a row of year-over-year declines. Buyer activity is strong with 19 straight weeks of year-over-year gains. Inventory has posted 31 consecutive weeks of year-over-year decreases.
“How’s the Market?” (Dinner Conversation Edition): New listings were down 22.5 percent to 1,311 and pending sales were up 40.6 percent to 883 contracts. The inventory bins contained 23,453 active listings at the start of last week – down 22.2 percent from last year. The Percent of Original List Price Received and Months Supply of Inventory metrics suggest a slowly improving landscape for sellers although they are still entrenched in buyer-favorable territory for the time being.
Weekly Market Activity Report
We are now up to 14 consecutive weeks of accelerating inventory attrition. Let’s go out on a limb and call this a pattern. For the current period, the number of active listings was down 20.6 percent to 24,047 properties. That’s the largest inventory decline in nearly eight years. The metric is now back around first-quarter 2006 levels.
It’s plain to see what’s driving these declines. Sales are up and listings are down, allowing buyers to absorb the active supply of homes. Buyer activity was up 43.3 percent to 957 purchase agreements signed. While those 957 contracts are reminiscent of 2007, 2008 and even 2009 purchase levels, they far exceed the 2010 summer slowdown. We have now reached 16 consecutive weeks of double-digit gains in buyer activity. Once again, it feels safe to call that a trend.
These undercurrents are flowing into other metrics, such as months supply and measures of seller concessions. Months supply of inventory was down to 7.7 months, the first year-over-year decline since June 2010. On average, sellers are receiving more of their asking price. August’s monthly figures, due to be released next Tuesday, should show a continuation pattern of the trends reported for July.
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Weekly Market Activity Report
For the week ending August 20, Twin Cities home sellers continued to list fewer properties than last year at this time,
as new listings were down 11.8 percent to 1,342. That makes for 11 consecutive weeks of (still welcome) declines.
Meanwhile, buyer activity was up 53.3 percent over last year, the largest increase in 12 weeks and the
15th consecutive week of double-digit gains.
Inventory has been a winner all summer, and we haven’t broken the positive pattern yet.
The number of active listings for sale was down 20.0% from 2010 to 24,183 homes.
That’s the largest decline since the beginning of 2004 and represents more than 6,000 fewer homes on the market than at this time last year.
A flurry of housing and employment reports due out this week could set the stage for the rest of the year.
These two economic indicators are more closely tied than ever.
Weekly Market Activity Report
Weekly Market Activity Report
While day traders continue along their roller coaster ride, 997 Twin Cities home buyers made the smart investment in real estate. That’s 40.0 percent more than those who made the investment last year. As this year’s pending sales trend line rounds off its seasonal peak, you’ll notice that purchase demand is coming back in line with historical trends.
Sellers were another story. There were 1,433 new listings, 18.7 percent fewer than this time last year. Seller activity has also likely reached its seasonal peak but remains below historical levels for this time of year. Consequently, buyers have effectively absorbed existing supply. That’s a good thing. The number of active listings is down 18.5 percent to 24,362 available homes for sale.
With strong sales and less new supply entering the market, the balance is shifting toward neutral. Both the prevalence and magnitude of seller concessions have stabilized, and absorption rates improved in July after 12 months of sizable increases. Though still slightly lower than last summer, prices have increased nearly 18.0 percent from March to June of this year.