The big news of November is that for the first time since February 2019 median home price shows 0% growth year over year. Active listings are up 225% Year over Year (8,816 properties on the market) and are moving slow with an average days on market of 58 days. Closed sales went down by 36% and months of inventory is 3.1 months.
Median sales price in October 2022 was just under $475k, so November shows a slight decline month over month, but stable compared to November 2021. While growth is 0% it's worthwhile remembering where we were in November 2021 - a very strong sellers market with low inventory and a YoY growth compared to 2020 of almost 30%. The market was in 0.8 month of inventory and only had 2,768 active listings (compared to almost 9,000 this November).
We have seen houses sit on the market for longer - which is great news for our buyer clients who now have the time to look for their dream house and have less competition when making an offer. High interest rates might be a concern, but there are options to help with that - e.g. there is less need to shoulder as big of a chunk of the closing cost as it was a few months ago, and that money can be used to buy down your rate. Some sellers are offering to pay for rate buy-down upfront. We wrote an article on options to lower your rate a few months ago, and the tips are still valid! See the article here.
For sellers, we have seen some of our clients move to leasing instead of selling at this point. This really depends on your personal position - how quickly do you need the cash for the house, are you willing to put in the work of being a landlord, etc.
