Because sellers were timid to list their homes on the market during the pandemic’s peak in spring, housing inventory is still down over last year. This caused a push on the demand side. After falling slightly, home prices are back up again.
The average sale price came back up for the month of September to $594,644. This is a 2% increase over the last months’ $582,788, and very close to September one year ago when the price was $600,345.
Cumulative days on the market is now down significantly too, which means homes are selling faster. The average home took 104 days to go into contract, down 21 days over the previous month. But CDOM is up by about the same margin when we compare it to September 2019’s average of 87 days.
Active listings currently sit at 2,277. This represents a 6% decline from last year’s 2,416. With inventory down over last year, months inventory fell too. This figure shows how long it would take to take to clear all current inventory. September’s months inventory was just 6.83 months, down a full 33% over the prior month’s 9.13. With homes taking â…” the amount of time to sell than they were just a month before, the rise in prices makes even more sense.
Now onto home sales. In September, 332 homes sold in Staten Island. This is almost dead even with September of 2019, when 322 homes sold, so not much change there. However, it’s a marked improvement over the prior month. Home sales normally drop as summer transitions into fall, but not this year. September home sales were up by 28% over the prior month’s low 259.
Rising Seller Confidence Will Increase Supply, but This Does Not Increase Demand
The recent activity spike our own office had over the past month could indicate a trend throughout the island, so we aren’t surprised to see prices spike again after falling for a couple of months.
Another reason that homes could be selling faster now is that sellers are pricing their homes in line with what buyers are willing to pay, as opposed to over-pricing them. List prices came down quite a bit during the pandemic’s height. The average home was listed for just $556,798. However, the new average list price broke $700k last month for the first time in several years. Sellers are getting more confident now, but this may backfire on them in the coming months if buyers don’t fall in line with their demands.
Not only are new list prices up, but new listings are up since last year too. In September of 2020, 691 new homes were listed for sale compared to 587 one year ago. So to recap: sale prices and number of sales are both on par with last year, inventory is down, and new listings are up. Days on the market, while down from the prior month, are still higher than last year’s. Taking all of this into consideration, it looks like the bump we received over the past few months may not last for sellers.
