SFH March report: it *was* going to be a strong spring
The numbers for what the real estate market did in March are out and we can see that the market was setting up for a strong spring but we know from looking at what happened week-by-week in March that COVID-19 is going to put the brakes on that. None-the-less, here’s a look back at March.
The median price of a single-family home and townhome increased $64,500 from February to $784,950 nearly returning to the all-time high of $800,000 we saw April and May of 2018. Keep in mind that most March closes are based on homes that buyers got under contract in February before COVID-19 was top of mind.
Not surprisingly we saw more new listings in March, 918, than in February, 738. But we saw less than we saw a year ago, 1,022 likely because sellers held off in the last two weeks of March due to the stay-at-home order.
There were less homes for sale in March 2020 than 2019 which is why in early March we saw so many bidding wars.
Due to declining inventory and strong buyer interest, likely in the first half of March, we saw the median days on market decline. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to this number for April.
Foretelling what we’ll learn in May about April, the number of homes pending was only 680 which was fewer than 2013 through now.
