January was a month of continued demand and interest in the market. Compared to a year ago we see are seeing a noticeable uptick in activity from buyers. We saw new listings increase 23% compared to a year ago and sold listings increase 4.2% compared to a year ago. This definitely seems to match up with what I was seeing when watching the market in my area on a daily basis.
The average days on market for a listing to go from active to pending was 54 days. When we look at January of 2019 and 2020 we see that the average time for a house to sell was 63 and 65 days respectively so 54 days is right in line with previous “normal” markets. It’s also important to look at median days on market because it tends to reduce the influence of outliers on the data. The median days on market was 37 days which is down from 42 days last year.
More recently I’ve been noticing homes going to pending status fairly quickly and homes sitting on the market for less time than a month ago. We’re also seeing the number of showings increase year over year by 10%. This is a pretty substantial increase and I think it demonstrates that there is in fact some pent up demand. In the last week or so though we’ve also seen interest rates increase and as a result we’ve seen mortgage applications fall.
Sellers who are in a position to time when they want to hit the market should be getting their homes ready and paying close attention to what interest rates, jobs data, and inflation numbers are doing. Why? Because we saw an influx of buyers and activity that was spurred on by good numbers last month but as that data changed this month the mortgage applications fell. So I think we’ve seen that when rates come down in the 6.5% range or lower there are buyers ready to go and seller’s should be ready to list their property.
I’m not saying you should try to time the market though. Trying to perfectly time anything like real estate is very tough and you should decide to make a move when the time is right for you and your situation.