| Finally. That’s the word I’m focused on. It’s finally happening. It’s a double-edged sword, but in the long-run, we’ll be better off not living in a savagely unhealthy market. What it’ll look like in the future is still up in the air, but my favorite real estate analyst who coined the term “savagely unhealthy” to describe this market, agrees… finally. A handful of loyal readers of this newsletter have recently told me that my favorite analyst is their favorite analyst. Logan Mohtashimi is the lead data analyst at housingwire.com and if you don’t have a favorite analyst, listen to his pod and read his stuff. I think he is right on. Wait until you hear what he has to say about the Fed. What can I say that y’all don’t know about what’s happening in the market? It’s slower. At this point we have 16.8% fewer sales this year than last. Now that the 3rd quarter has ended, we can lock that number in for our targeted year-end result. It surely won’t get any better, but I don’t think it’ll get worse. We’ve settled into a new pattern of fewer monthly sales. Our active inventory isn’t growing because potential sellers aren’t listing. Those who do list are still getting a decent return that’s higher than at this point last year. Even though the game has changed, there are still players, just fewer of them… on both sides. Over the past two years, Ft. Collins single-family homes sales experienced 20 straight months of higher average prices and fewer days on market. That is an exceedingly rare occurrence that I doubt will ever happen again. The chart in this months’ report is very interesting, not for just the stuff in the middle, but the data at BOTH ends. The right end shows something we didn’t really expect to see in a rising interest rate environment– healthy price increases. We expected to see days on market increase, but weren’t prices supposed to crash? Well, year to date (YTD), through three full quarters, we currently have a 13.8% average price increase over YTD in 2021…with 16.8% fewer sales and 6% interest rates. Explain that one. September 2022 Northern Colorado Real Estate Stats Oh, I forgot to mention the left side of the chart. That’s what normal kinda looks like. Everyone remembers that lockdown started in March of 2020, for several months before and for many after, homes were selling for over asking and everyone’s heads were spinning. The average price back then was a quaint $484,400 (now it’s $632,231 for a smooth 23.4% increase) and days on market averaged 68 days. With our giant increase of 21.1% in days on market this month, we are only at 46. I don’t recall any complaints about the market back then. All I can say about where we are headed is: Freddie Mac predicts an additional 10% decline in sales volume next year. There is a pretty scary number in the Loveland Attached data this month. The increase in Active Listings is up 247.2%. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a number that high for any reason and we expect listings to go up, but this is much higher than all other areas in Northern Colorado. It’s pretty simple. There are 6 homes that sold over in Centerra that were listed between 33 and 445 days. When we normalize the data to remove new construction, our result of 37 days on market, which is just one day higher than last year. Nothing to see here folks. Due to new construction and the variety of price points in Northern Colorado, we are seeing varying degrees of sales volume throughout the region. We have Greeley single-family sales DOWN 12.4%, Johnstown/Milliken UP 0.2%, Windsor/Timnath DOWN 35.3% and Loveland UP 13.6%. We see the same thing in days on market. This is a metric that everyone predicts to go up, but somehow we are down significantly in Greeley attached, Windsor/Timnath, Johnstown/Milliken and Berthoud with no correlation between the two.I really like what I see in the Loveland market these days. Single family sales are higher this year; average and median prices are up and days on market are up moderately. Their attached market still appears fairly healthy with sales still getting more than asking. Let’s keep an eye on this, because with all the new construction inventory things could change in a hurry. It looks like it could be a beautiful fall. It’s also the start of the 4th quarter. The old adage in real estate is that the work you put in today will give you results in 90 days. I hate to break this to you, but the new year is in less than 90 days… so get to work on next year by executing on a marketing plan now. If you are in need of a marketing plan/ideas/what to do to drum up business, there are tons of resources out there, but feel free to give us a call and we will put our heads together to create a plan that’s just right for you. September 2022 Northern Colorado Real Estate Stats (pdf) |
| Cheers, Kyle Snyder Market Consultant |