I’ve always
said the best time to list a home for sale is early in the year, and the
logic is pretty simple.
While most
sellers are more established and more beholden to the school calendar,
first-time buyers and those trapped paying sky high lease rates are not. And every
year, it seems that thousands of people make the decision during the holidays
to buy a new home after the first of the year.
January hits
and all of these freshly motivated, fired up buyers come out swinging… and
there’s virtually nothing on the market.
I’ve been
quite active with buyers over the first two weeks of the year and I can tell
you that this pattern is repeating itself yet again. In the southwest metro area (Lakewood and Littleton),
for example, there are 89 total listings under $400k. A staggering 70 of them are under contract!
That’s
roughly 79% of the inventory, which is pure insanity. Remember that a “normal” market has about
twice as many homes for sale as there are under contract at any point in
time.
Run the
numbers forward, and with 70 homes under contract there should be about 140 on
the market. There are 19.
Run the
numbers backward, and with 19 homes on the market, there should be about 10
under contract. There are 70.
Looking at
new listings after 4 p.m. on weekdays, it’s not uncommon to be stacked up two
and three parties deep in the driveway waiting to get in. On the weekends, you simply need to budget an
extra 15 to 20 minutes per listing to account for your wait time.
I’ve spent
much of the last year looking for signs of change inside our market. I've poured over numbers looking for breaks in the pattern. For a brief spell at the end of
summer into early fall, things did slow down.
The number of showings and offers dwindled and, for a moment, it felt
like our market was shifting.
But based on
the first 14 days of 2016, it appears that was just an operational pause, not a
shift.
To start the
year, buyers are coming out swinging… and if you want to buy a house, you had
better be prepared to compete, especially below $400k.
