Buyers Return to the Market
Real estate professionals waited with bated breath to see what the market activity looked like following the lull at the end of December. Buyers returned to the market with an increase in showing activity of 80.7% over the last week of December. 11,122 Total showings were set as the New Year kicked off in 2023. While market showings are not what they were 1 year ago, being down by 51.2% the buzz in the market is positive for a spring pick up. I expect showings to increase steadily week over week through spring. With 80.7% more showings, we also saw a nice bump in pending transactions up 61.9% week over week with 685 units going under contract. Now what's interesting is that buyers are being more discerning about putting a property under contract and looking at an average of 16 homes before putting a property under contract. 2023 Is a year of skill and not speed to entice buyers to make offers. Buyers want turn-key homes that show well, are priced right, staged, with great photography and the ability to either negotiate a rate buy down and/or have seller concessions to cover closing costs.
Active inventory for sale heading into the first full week of January was 4,477 units available for sale which is in line with the average inventory for January historically from 2013-2019. Inventory fell week over week by -6.9% even though new listings were up week over week by 150%. Active inventory fell because, again, our pending transactions rose 61.9% over the last week. This created a shift between the relationship of supply and demand pushing our predictive months of inventory down to 1.5 months. This means that at the current rate of sales it would take about 1.5 months to sell off the existing inventory or for every 1 buyer in the market they have about 1.5 homes to choose from. This is back into extreme seller's market territory, but not necessarily multiple offer territory. Buyers should take advantage now before our market really compresses in the months of February, March and April where we tend to see the most competitive months of the year.
