November 2022 Market Update

for Sarasota-Manatee Counties

Hey, it's Matt Bohanan here with House Match and it's time for your November Market Update, the real estate info you need to know for your buying and selling needs.

So let's hop right into the numbers:

Closed Sales

In October 2022, we saw closed sales drop about 25% from this same time last year. The interesting thing is that we saw closed sales bump up about 16% from the same time last month. So we're going to pay attention to that in the next coming months to see if that was a fluke because we just had Hurricane Ian come through, as that could have pushed some closings off until the next month. Alternatively, we could just be seeing an uptick in closed sales where the big blip in the market is starting to even out. We're going to pay attention to that over the next few months.

*Statistics from https://www.floridarealtors.org/*

Pending Sales

Pending sales are down about 48% from this time last year and they're down 15% from the month prior. So once again, let's see how much of that was impacted by the hurricane and how much of that was impacted by rates going up. So that's going to be one to pay attention to in the next 30 to 60 days to see what kind of trends come out.

New Listings

We take a look at new listings because we want to see if the market still hot, if sellers are confident they can get the price they want, and if inventory is going to keep increasing. We saw our new listings go down about 24% from this same time last year. However, it did stay the same as last month. We saw the same number of homes come on the market month-over-month, so we really won't see an increase in inventory.

Median Sale Price

This was an interesting one because we saw the median price jump about 31% from this same time last year. And the really interesting part is we saw the median price jump about 8% from the prior month. That's one of those headlines that the news and local paper might grab and say, “home prices rise 8% month-over-month.”

We took a deep dive into the numbers and found that home prices didn't jump 8%; we just had a lot more high dollar homes close in the month of October than we did the $200k to $300k price range, which bumps that median price way up. So I don't think prices really increased; we just saw an increase in the number of high dollar sales. Now you know when you read those news articles that if you actually look into the data, you can parse out the real information.

Median Time to Contract

This is how long it takes from the time you list your own to the time it goes under contract. This one is up about 266% from this time last year. If you read that, that's a scary number; anything that isn't your income that increases by 266% is usually not good. But when we look at the numbers, we see the actual numbers went from 6 days a year ago, to 22 days now. It's still taking just three weeks to get your home under contract, which is still a quick timeframe. Historically, we've seen that number getting up to 45 to 60 days (sometimes even longer in buyers market). So for homes to sell in three weeks is still quick. If you're a seller, you just have to be aware that if your home is priced right, marketed correctly, and it looks good, it's still going to sell relatively quickly.

Advice for Sellers

For sellers, our advice in this market is to make sure you're leading the pack because now you're competing with four or five homes in your neighborhood and each new home sets the tone. If you come in at the highest price point, all you did was help all the other ones sell. So now you want to lead the pack with price and features and get the most people through because you can still sell for a great price in three weeks or less.

Inventory (Active Listings)

Inventory is up about 158% from this time last year. Once again, that's one of those scary numbers when you look at it. We went from 0.8 months in October of 2021 to about 2.5 months of inventory in October 2022. That means if all the homes sold and nothing else came on the market, it would take two and a half months for everything to be gone.

Seller’s Market

These numbers tell us that we’re still in a seller's market, but we're getting closer to that balanced market. This will be healthy for everybody, because sellers will have healthy competition (which will keep prices relatively stable where they should be) and buyers will have more options, so they can take a little bit more time. Buyers can also do a little bit more negotiation to get either closing cost assistance or get a little bit better of a price if there's multiple homes in the same neighborhood that they're looking at.

We're going to pay attention as the year closes out to see what happens with interest rates, we have the Fed's last meeting coming up, and a couple of other important factors to see what's going to impact the economy going into next year.