Showings per listing are historically slow and inventory is rising, days on market might be getting longer already, yet prices remain elevated.  Is this the early beginning of a seasonal shift that normally doesn’t come for another 2 months?  Maybe…  

Showings  

Showings have been slow this year, but not catastrophically low.  We are 11.4% slower in showings than last year and 21% slower than 2018 and 2019. We won’t bother comparing to the outliers of 21’ and 22’.  

But inventory has risen and what sellers are experiencing is showings per listing slower than only one time on record, at the beginning of the Covid lockdowns. 

     

While frustrating for sellers, this data is so powerful to demonstrate your expertise and help your seller understand the value of your analytics and partnership to read and adapt to the market.     Make this part of your weekly seller report and then compare to the hyper local showing data of your seller’s competition.      

Showings per listing last week, by year:  

Year Weekly showings Per Listing
2018 6.25
2019 4.22
2020 .26
2021 14.57
2022 12.86
2023 5.30
2024 2.59

 

Days On Market

Days on market increased to 28.43 days after touching a year to date low of 24.29 days just two weeks ago.  As I mentioned last week, rising inventory, slower contract rates, slow showings and elevated interest rates suggest days on market may be on the rise.  I don’t want to jump to conclusions too quickly, but share with your sellers this potential so they are mentally prepared.    If this is a shift, recognize this may be a leverage point in negotiations for your buyers.    

New Listings  

New listing activity each week has been very strong year to date at 16,592 new listings YTD, compared to 14,358 last year and 17,954 in 2022. Remember that early 2022 interest rates were still very low and seller activity was exceedingly strong.     The average number of new listings YTD for the last 12 years is approximately 18,500 homes.          

Inventory  

Slower buyer activity, slower contracts and increased seller activity has lead to a statistically significant rise in inventory and the highest we’ve seen this time of year since 2012, end last week at 6,875 properties.     This of course means longer marketing time for the average property and as inventory typically climbs through the end of the summer, if rates remain high, suppressing buyer activity, inventory may climb above 10,000 for the first time in 12 years.  All signs are pointing that direction.        

Price  

And with all that, prices remain elevated, hitting an all time weekly high again last week at $726,245 for all property types and $818,979 for detached single family homes.        

Remember however, price is a lag measurement, meaning it tells us what happened in the past.  Price is a reflection of decisions made 25-40 days prior to the statistic.  With inventory rising and showings remaining relatively stagnation, I would anticipate pricing beginning to decline for the year, unless we see interest rates drop precipitously, boosting buyer activity.  That does not seem to be built into market conditions at the moment.      Expect stable to declining prices through the end of the year, and work with your sellers to price homes accordingly.      
Script for seller communication:    
“With inventory rising causing increased supply, and elevated interest rates slowing buyer activity causing reduced demand, we expect prices to be stable to declining through year end.      
Proper home preparation and house pricing is more important than it has been in a very long time.  And, once we go to market, rapid adjustments to market feedback will be crucial to ensure we don’t get behind a declining price curve.  A “negative price curve” is what happened to thousands of home owners in the 2008-2011 market.  They chased price down, but never got ahead of the decline of values.  Many of those people ended up never selling or they lost their homes to foreclosure.    
We don’t have the extreme of those market conditions today, but if you want to sell, we must be diligent about price and relentless about reading activity and feedback once we hit the market.”