Median Home Prices Up Over 6%

Here are the latest REColorado stats for the 7-county metro area for the month of November courtesy of SMDRA-

• 3,812 residences closed in November, down 1.3% from a year ago; but down 14% from November 2017.
• Leading the decline was attached homes, whose sales dropped 8.4% last month from last year and are down 19.7% from 2 years ago.
• Whereas detached homes saw a sales increase of 1.8% from last November. But, this was a 12.2% decrease from 2 years ago.
• New listings were down 7.2% year over year to 3,385 and down 2% from 2017.
• New listings on attached homes were down 4.5% from last year.
• New listings on detached homes were down 8.4% from last year.
• The number of new listings this year was the fewest since 2015. 

• 4,094 residences were under contract, a large increase of 18.7% from last year and an increase of 8.1% from 2 Novembers ago.
• In fact, we had more under contracts this November than we did last October which is very unusual.
• The number of under contracts in November was the highest we have seen in the last 5 years! November under contracts were 5.9% higher than the second highest level from 2016.
• We ended November with just 5,926 residences for sale, down 6.9% from last year.
• This puts months of inventory at 1.55 months.
• We had 17% fewer new listings than under contracts in November. WOW! With our low inventory levels we need more new listings than under contracts to increase inventory levels! 
• Average CDOM dropped to 41 days in November versus 45 days in 2018; but up from 40 days in 2017.
• Median CDOM increased to 21 days from 20 days last November and 13 days from 2 years ago.
• The Median CDOM didn't exceed 30 days until the $800k-$900k price range. 

• The overall average sales price was $478,105 an increase of 5.3% from a year ago.
• The average sales price on attached homes was $362,491, an increase of 3.2% from last year.
• The average sales price on detached homes was $522,811, an annual increase of 5.3%.
• The overall median sales price was $419k, an increase of 6.4% from a year ago.
• The median sales price on attached homes rose 4.8% to $309k.
• The median sales price on detached homes rose 5.2% to $447k.
• The sales to list price ratio last month was 98.9%, which was a slight increase from last year. 

In the all-important price range of $200k-$600k here are the numbers-

• New listings-77.4% of new listings were in this price range
• Solds-79.1% of solds were in this price range
• Actives-63% of active inventory is in this price range
• If we had more homes for sale in this price range it appears our sales numbers would be even higher. 

My Observations and Thoughts are very similar to last month's--

• The number of new listings year over year is now declining after barely increasing the previous 5 months.
• And the number of new listings in November was the fewest we have seen in the last 4 years.
• The fact that we had 17% fewer new listings than under contracts tells me that active inventory levels will keep dropping and so will months of inventory.
• In fact, inventory levels dropped 6.9% from last November after inventory levels had dropped 5.6% in October vs last October.
• Thus, we will see 2 things. First, higher appreciation rates and more bidding wars.
• For the first 6 months of the year median prices year over year were barely increasing, now they are up 6.4% year over year!
• Proving my rule that procrastination does NOT pay off!
• You combine higher prices with mortgage rates that should begin rising and soon be over 4% will cause buyers to kick themselves in the butt.