Market Data Deep Dive

If you get our newsletter each month you have seen some of these numbers already, but we wanted to take some time to break down housing data in a little more detail. The following statistics were provided by Northeast Florida Association of Realtors (NEFAR). NEFAR tracks and provides a huge amount of data to Realtors® each month, for this #ProTipTuesday we will dig into a few of the categories we find particularly interesting. We will be comparing the stats for Year To Date as of September 2017 vs Year To Date as of September 2018.

.                                                                                  YTD ’17                                YTD ’18                                Change

New Property Listings :                                     29,198                                  32,263                                   +10.5%

Pending Sales:                                                      22,665                                  23,853                                   +5.2%

Closed Sales:                                                         22,201                                   22,558                                   +1.6%

Average Sales Price:                                           $245,219                              $266,853                              +8.8%

Percentage of List Price Received:                  95.5%                                    95.8%                                    +0.3%

Properties Sold Over List Price:                      14.3%                                    14.3%                                    No Change

Housing Affordability Index:                           161                                         135                                         -16.1%

So, what do these figures tell us? More properties were up for sale so far this year than there were last year at the same time. The increase was significant too. While an annual supply increase of more than 10% would typically put downward pressure on prices in most industries, the fact is there have not been enough homes for-sale for a long time. So the increased supply hasn’t had any sizable effect on price yet. There were also more properties under contract waiting to close this year. That, and the number of closed sales, points to still-healthy demand.

You’ll notice that “Closed Sales” was quite a bit less than “New Property Listings” this means some left-overs. If this trend continues we will likely see a slowing in price increases and more available inventory. That would be good news for buyers because there are more options available, but bad news for sellers because there would be more competition. While we haven’t seen a reduction in price, or really even an end to price increases, what we have seen is displayed in the percentage of asking price received. While “Percentage of List Price Received” is up, compared to the same point last year, it actually went down recently from August ‘18 (95.7%) to September ‘18 (95.4%). This shows that while sales prices are increasing, they are barely keeping up with seller expectations. This is the most interesting thing to us, it looks like sellers are starting to expect prices to increase by more than buyers think they should.

Another thing to note is the “Housing Affordability Index”. This index measures average monthly household income vs what is needed to qualify to purchase the average home. So far this year, the index is 135 meaning the average household makes 35% more than what is needed to buy the average house. The lower the number the harder it is for folks to qualify to buy a house. Incomes are not keeping pace with housing price increases, not even close. If this index goes to 100 (exactly the amount needed to qualify) or below, things really change and many new buyers won’t be able to enter the market.

This was a little different than our typical #ProTipTuesday, let us know what you thought. We eat, sleep and breath Real Estate so we have a tendency to really nerd out on data. Hopefully this gives you a good idea of what is going on.

Source: Northeast Florida Association of Realtors. September 2018