For August, sold homes were down 16% from last year, with decreases in existing and new construction sales. For the first time in a while, the median sales price was down less than a percent to $270,000, while the average price was up 3% over last year at $329,755.
Days on market increased 21% to 17 (CDOM was 19). That sounds like a big jump, but the average days on market for August in the last ten years has been 44 days.
Pending listings (homes under contract) fell 30% in August to 175 single-family homes under contract. Again, this number is in line with previous years.
The months supply of homes on the market increased 32% to 1.43 months. The average home supply for August for the past ten years has been 3.06 months; all price ranges are below three months of inventory. The price range between $450K to $749K averaged 2.71 months of supply in August. All other price ranges were below two months.
Building permits in August were down 39% and 33% for the year for Columbia, Boone County, and Ashland combined.
Mortgage rates have been on the rise since falling to around 5% in early August. FreddieMac released their weekly primary mortgage market survey this morning, showing rates around 6.02% for a 30 Yr FRM, based on their weekly survey. Mortgage News Daily rate index shows rates for a 30 Yr. FRM at a 52-week of 6.33% as of today.
There has been a lot of “doom and gloom” in the media about the current state of the housing market. Overall, the market is still strong when compared to August prior to the pandemic as the housing market continues to normalize with the rest of the economy. Excluding 2020 and 2021, 230 sold units for August of 2022 is the highest number of sold listings we’ve seen locally. Prices are still up, even with a slight decrease in the median price, with the median price still up 15% over August 2020. Every price range in our local market is still showing signs of a “seller’s market” and should continue to do so until we see significant gains in market inventory.
Source – Columbia Board of Realtors CEO, Brian Toohey, MBA, RCE, ePro