December’s Market Summary

It’s A Wrap!

December’s Market Summary

Here are the ARMLS numbers for December 1, 2023, compared with
December 1, 2022 for all areas & types:

• Active Listings (excluding UCB & CCBS): 15,981 versus 19,155 last year –
down 17% – but up 4.8% from 15,247 last month

• Active Listings (including UCB & CCBS): 18,050 versus 21,206 last year – down 15% – but up 4.0% compared with 17,364 last month

• Pending Listings: 3,798 versus 4,301 last year – down 12% –
and down 2.9% from 3,911 last month

• Under Contract Listings (including Pending, CCBS & UCB):
5,867 versus 6,352 last year – down 7.6% – and down 2.7% from
6,028 last month

• Monthly Sales: 4,616 versus 4,928 last year – down 6.3% –
and down 11% from 5,210 last month

• Monthly Average Sales Price per Sq. Ft.: $288.97 versus $272.29
last year – up 6.1% – but down 2.1% from $295.13 last month

• Monthly Median Sales Price: $439,000 versus $420,000 last year –
up 4.6% – and up 0.9% from $435,000 last month

After rising during October, and peaking at an average just over 8%
mid-month, mortgage rates declined thereafter and tumbled through November. In theory, this should have injected some life into housing demand, but there is little evidence of this in the numbers above. Fewer homes are under contract than last month and far fewer than a year ago, when we were all depressed about the low demand. Sales counts are also down from last year and last month reaching the unusually low level of 4,616 in November.

The new home market continues to outperform the resale market. Mortgage rate buy-downs have kept new home demand at a healthy level.

December is not usually a month for us to see a flood of new home buyers,
so we anticipate that the second half of January will tell us whether buyers see a big difference between mortgage rates around 7% compared with 8%.
The last 12 months have been full of surprises, so caution and watching the
statistics carefully is still the order of the day.

– The Cromford Report