January Stats Summary
- The January Single-Family Home Sales Stats for Boone County show a 9% increase in sales to 144 units, driven by existing home sales, while new construction sales dropped 20%.
- Median prices fell 5% to $317,200, but were up 12% compared to January 2023. There’s more to the story – read below
- Pending listings rose 21%, though they dropped 11% compared to the same period last year.
- Average days on market decreased by 34%, while new listings increased by 26%.
There are lots of caveats to the January stats.
Sales in January were up 9% to 144 units, led by existing home sales, while new construction sales dipped by 20%, but that was only by four houses.
Prices for January are another story. The median price last month was down by 5% to $317,200, and the average price was down 3% to $354,494 when compared to the previous year. However, there’s a deeper story. The median price from January 2023 to 2024 was up 17%. Even though the market experienced a 5% decrease last month, the median price last month was still up 12% compared to 2023.
Pending listings (homes under contract) made a huge jump in January, up 21% over last year, but pending listings from January 2023 to 2024 were down 11%, so compared to 2023, pending listings were up 11%. Pending listings for January locally are opposite the national market. The National Association of REALTORS® reported yesterday that pending listings nationally dropped by 4.6%, reaching an all-time low since NAR began tracking pending listings in the 1990s. NAR attributes the dropping pending sales to the weather in January, which was the coldest January in 25 years.
With increased sales and pending listings, average days on market dropped to 38 days, down 34% from last year. New listings hitting the market were up 26% in January, pushing the months of inventory up 12% to 3.23 months, even with a jump in sales and pending listings.
Building permits in Boone County and the City of Columbia have started a little sluggishly, but this could result from a jump in overall permits in 2024. Ashland saw a huge jump in permits last month, going from only three permits pulled in January of 2023 to 17 the previous month.
The increased sales and pending listings are even more of a surprise when mortgage rates are factored in. Mortgage rates in January for a 30-year FRM ranged from 7% to 7.5%. Since mid-February, mortgage rates have seen a steep decline, down below 6.8% according to Mortgage News Daily. The drop in mortgage rates follows the US 10-Year Treasury yield decline the past two weeks. The drop in bond yields is based on two schools of thought, based on your political perspective. Potential cuts in government spending are narrowing the U.S. budget deficit, or the economy is starting to weaken with higher inflation to come, pushing investors out of equities and into bonds and gold. You can choose which is the case. One other economic note, the drop in yields has created another inverted yield curve (shorter term bonds having a higher yield than longer term bonds). Historically, this is a leading indicator of a recession within 12 to 18 months. However, the most recent yield curve was in 2022 and lasted for 793 days, resulting from high inflation, ending in September of last year, without a recession thus far.
The local housing market is still on stable ground. There was a price drop, but with the extreme increase from 2023 to 2024, the drop in prices shouldn’t be concerning at this time. In addition, the chart below shows growth in prices in Columbia for existing houses while the rest of the Midwest has seen prices decline steadily. The growth in existing home sales is also a positive, giving buyers more options, and along with mortgage rates, could get more buyers off the sidelines heading into the spring market.
SOURCE – COLUMBIA BOARD OF REALTORS CEO, BRIAN TOOHEY, MBA, RCE, EPRO
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