Review of the Last Year in Real Estate

This last year has shown some positive results in the world of real estate. with the new year bringing in the cold weather and snow we all missed, it also brought in the 4th quarter and year end analysis of the market over the last 12 months. Some of these interesting talking points will hopefully help you make the final decision to either getting your house on the market or looking at the possibility of moving yourself.

Talking Points of the 4th Quarter

Months Supply of Homes for Sale:  -12.8%

Percent of Original List Price Received:  +1%

Median Sales Price:  +7.0%

Days on Market Until Sale:  -2.6%

Pending Sales 4th Quarter:  +11.4%

New Listings 4th Quarter:  +2.6%

The information presented can sometimes be a little intimidating, but with some simple peering through the numbers you will quickly see some interesting information that presents itself to you. To start out with we have seen a 12.8% decrease in the months supply of homes for sale over the last 12 month average. This simply means that the the number of months it would take the current supply of homes on the market to sell decreased from 3.9 months to 3.4 months. These numbers mean that we are seeing homes in higher demand than the average  and that there are more buyers than sellers at the moment. This is great news for those who are in the market to move. With lower competition and higher demand we are seeing housing prices increase over the last years averages. 

Median sales price has shown an increase of 7% over the last 12-month average meaning that homes are still on the rise overall and should continue to do so given trends present in the market. This increase of median sales prices is also shown to be impressive when you couple it with the increase of 1% of original listing price. While the percentage of original list price received only showed an increase of 1%, it is still important to mention due to the fact that we are currently at 96.6% of original list price received this year and even a small increase is rather important. So even with the increase of median sales price we are still seeing increases in price received percentages.

The 12-month average of decrease of days on market of 2.6% shows two rather important things in the market. One it is showing that the market is showing lower average days on market that we haven't seen since before the recession. Two, the market is currently in a higher state of demand for the current active homes.  Each year the monthly average does follow a cyclical pattern, but the positive thing about this last year is that we are seeing lower days on average for each month. People are putting their homes on the market and seeing them sold faster than records show since before the recession.

Pending sales are showing an increase of 11.4% withing the 4th quarter of this last year. This is a surprising piece of information. The winter months leading up to the new year tend to result in a slower market due to the time of the year, however we have been seeing not only a steady rise over the years in yearly data we are also seeing earlier and earlier spring preparation for the spring market. This is only shown to be true by the 4th quarter increase in new listings of 2.6%. While that might not seem like a huge increase, it has been been proving to follow the historical pattern of previous yearly increases in new listings. This steady increase back to numbers that we knew from before the recession is still a ways off but it shows great things in the market recovery all the same.

All information was gathered from the Minneapolis Area Associations of Realtors annual reports. For more information please feel free to visit Minneapolis Area Association of Realtors website for more information.