That’s a great question! There is a meme circulating on Facebook among real estate agents that says, ‘Remember back in March when you wanted to buy some toilet paper? It’s kinda like that.’
While that is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, if someone is a buyer in this market, they might find the analogy pretty apt. Lots of people storming the store and the shelves are pretty empty!
This chart shows existing home market statistics for Ada County through the end of December.
In the upper left graphic, the red line shows the number of active homes on the market each month for the last year. Typically our seasonal trend has the lowest number of homes on the market in January, then inventory steadily increases until July, then it slowly decreases again until December.
And then came 2020. Inventory decreased in February for the first time since I started watching this data in 2009, then increased sharply, peaking in April for the first time, and it has declined steadily ever since. At the end of December, there were only 85 existing homes - not including new construction - on the market in the entire county! Compare that to 2011 when there were over 3400 homes on the market and you can see why the TP analogy hits home.
And, the price of that TP has hit an all-time high. The average sold price in Ada County in 2020, according to the lower-left graphic, was $427,452! Compare that to $160,113 in 2011.
The big graphic has two key columns: ‘Months of Inventory’ and ‘Sold to Orig(inal Price) Ratio’. ‘Months of inventory’ means that if no other homes came on the market, this is how many months it would take to sell everything that’s currently on the market.
Generally four to six months of inventory is considered a ‘balanced’ market, with over six months a ‘buyer’s’ market and under four months a ‘seller’s’ market. You can see that the average inventory is less than one week! And homes are selling on average for 99.9% of their asking price. That means some are selling for less and many are selling for more than their asking price - think multiple offers and auction-like conditions.
Fortunately there is a bit of good news for buyers in that interest rates are historically low. However, most of the good news in our current market is for sellers: crazy-low inventory, lots of people moving here, and prices are high.
If you are considering selling - or downsizing - anytime soon, now would be an excellent time!
Give us a call at (208) 327-2127 and we can talk to you about your options, timing, etc.
