As you know, Covid has made things VERY weird recently, and even caused a lot of uncertainty when it comes to real estate.
So I have some numbers that I want to share with you. We get real market reports sent to us every month, so I can look at things and even compare the month of June this year to June last year just to see where we stand.
And what I found that was so interesting is that the market hasn’t changed a whole lot!
If I look at June of 2019 versus June today, the numbers are very similar.
So let me share a few stats with you that I find very interesting. So first of all, in southeast Baton Rouge, which is an area we work in the most last year in June, which again is the month of May that the number of months supply of homes in the market was 4.7 months.
Right now it’s 4.3 months. So I thought well are there fewer homes,
so maybe that’s why we’re having a little bit higher closings.
Not really.
This year in May, 483 homes are pending. And last year at the same time, there were 495 homes pending in southeast Baton Rouge.
That’s not a whole lot of difference. And 509 closed this year in the past six months, versus 484 in the past six months last year.
So I think that’s very interesting because we’re thinking that because of the virus that you know, things have really slowed down.
Well, they have slowed down in some respect, but it’s not showing up in big numbers. There are some parishes that it is showing up and I can tell you when I look it over.
Ascension Parish numbers are off by several hundred in last year.
When I got my report in June, there were 913 homes set to close in Ascension parish in the previous six months, and this year only 784.
So I see a little difference there. But I go to Livingston Parish, and they’re up 923 closings in the past six months this year versus 857 last year. The market is moving amazingly.
Now I’ll tell you what really happens. This is what I’m seeing that’s a little bit different.
The homes that are in the sweet spot, and for every parish, it’s the same…
If you’re under $200,000, the amount of supply for the market is less than two to three months. So that’s kind of normal. I expect that to be typical, but the higher the price range the time on market really increased this year compared to before.
Right now, in southeast Baton Rouge, we’re looking at 4.3 months supply.
But when I drill it down by price range, if I get down to, let’s say $300,000 to $400,000 houses at the five months supply homes in the market.
You go from two months supply for under $200,000.
You get to four months when you go to $300,000.
And then once you hit $400,000, it’s five months $600,000.
So the higher end houses are really taking a hit right now. I think there’s two things:
- People waiting to see what the stock market does
- And then of course, the virus.
I think that entry level people are able to go ahead and buy that first home and make that move. It’s just the people who make that move over take a little bit longer.
That’s what these numbers show. But when I look at how many closings have happened, homes are selling — we were selling faster this year in January and February, and then the virus hit and March has slowed us down tremendously at that point.
I think we wait another month, and we’ll get some more statistics — statistics that will show us how we actually did in May.
So by the time we have a March, April and May group of statistics I think it’s gonna be pretty evident what the markets getting ready to do.
Now we can say there’s been lots more showings happening. A lot of people out looking at winter open houses, I’m hearing that people are coming.
We had one yesterday, where we had eight groups of people come through.
That’s another interesting fact that really good looking homes are selling fast, just like they always did. The ones that are a little more challenge take a little bit longer to sell the ones that are higher price to take a little bit longer to sell.
So the market, even though it’s changed, it’s still amazingly the same.
We’re on track, to close as many houses as we did last year.
Once this market goes to phase two, I think we’re going to see a lot more increase in showings and sales. So that’s my prediction on the market!
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