Average price saw a massive jump in April, from $1,108,606 in March to $1,153,269. That’s an increase of 4.0%, which is something I thought we might see in March, only to find it one month later. That means we’ve now pulled even with prices as they were, approximately, in June of 2022. Year-over-year, April of 2022’s average home price still stands 7.8% higher, at $1,250,704, than the $1,153,269 recorded last month. But that 7.8% is actually a good number considering the delta was a whopping 14.6% in this space last month. Prices right now are increasing¸ and if we go back to this time in 2022, they were decreasing. That means the year-over-year delta is shrinking and I believe we’ll pull even by summer, and surpass 2022’s figures by fall.
Sales saw two massive month-over-month increases in February and March; 54.3% and 44.3%, and yet we only saw an increase of 9.2% in April, from the 6,896 sales in March to 7,531 sales last month. And those 7,531 sales are the third-lowest in any month of April, which, if we remove the pandemic-stricken month of April, 2020, becomes the second-lowest. But sales in March were the third-lowest of all time as well, so this simply seems to be a continuation of the existing market which is suffering from a dearth of listings. Year-over-year, sales are down 5.2% from the 7,940 recorded in April of 2022 to the aforementioned 7,531 last month.
New listings is the statistic that will really explain what’s happening in the market. Month-over-month, we saw an increase of only 1.6%, from 11,184 in March to 11,344 in April. This is on the heels of a 29.5% increase in new listings from February-to-March. Suffice it to say, there was a lot less offered for sale in April than we had hoped there to be! That shows, rather obviously, via the year-over-year data. Consider that those 11,344 new listings in April of 2023 are a full 38.3% lower than the 18,416 recorded in April of 2022. Do the math here: new listings are down 38.3% and sales are only down 5.2%. The absorption rate must be through the roof.Active listings increased by a modest 2.5% on a month-over-month basis, from 10,120 in March to 10,373 in April, which is basically a rounding error. But as noted in the previous section, if listing activity is down almost 40% and sales are only down by 5%, then absorption is increasing. That’s why it’s no surprise to see a 20.8%decline in active listings, year-over-year, from the 13,092 recorded at the end of April, 2022, to the 10,373 recorded last month. This is on the heels of a 0.4% decline, year-over-year, in March, so when we look back at this market by year’s end, we’ll have seen April as the true tipping point.
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