We all know the holiday season is a busy one! Here we are in mid January and I am just getting around to going over the November and December market stats! Cut yourself some slack this post holiday season. It's cold out, and we were busy celebrating!
The truth is, we didn't miss much in the market. Everything has been relatively stable here in Tucson. The average home price took a slight dip in November ($443,127) only to bounce right back up in December ($455,302). This is an increase from last December's average price of $429,575, so congrats! If you took the leap in the last year, you are about $25,727 richer!
The average days on market also took a dip in November (40) and popped back up in December (44). We are right in the range of where we were last December, at 46 days on market. In a typical year, by February or March this number will start to trend downward, although if lower interest rates beat the snowbirds here, we might see things tighten up a lot quicker.
Months of inventory available went up slightly in November to 3 months, and then down to 2.8 months in December. Three months of inventory (and even 2.8 months) is a great number that we haven't seen in Tucson since early 2019, a year before the pandemic! It shows that buyers may have more options than in the past. It's not quite considered a balanced market but we are working our way there.
There were 3,103 homes for sale in November and 2,899 in December. This is just slightly lower than those same months last year, which had 3,317 and 3,051 homes for sale. Again, this is not the ideal number we want to see in a balanced market, but it is heading in the right direction. For reference, in March, 2021 there were only 1,274 homes for sale in our MLS. So I choose to be grateful for the options our buyers have and hopeful for the future!
I do think 2024 is going to be a great year for real estate! With the fed predicted not to raise interest rates again and hopefully lower them, I think we will see a flood of buyers. I read a statistic that while 82% of current homeowners feel trapped by their incredible covid interest rate, 5.5% is the magic number that would entice these owners to move. One of the biggest hurdles in our market to getting inventory where we need it has been dubbed the golden handcuff effect, which means that owners have such a low payment on their house that even if they downsized they'd be paying more. But most people agree that a 5.5% rate would get them out of their homes and on the move. Will we see that this year? I don't know, but I'll be excited to watch!
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