| Newer Post | home | Older Post |
 |
 |
Midway Through 2024, Home Sales Are Increasing But Sales Price Increases May Be Slowing |
|
 Happy Thursday... and... Happy Free Slurpee Day! ;-) We are officially halfway through 2024! Wow! It has been a whirlwind of a start of the year... and a HOT start to summer. I enjoyed seeing many of you at Red Wing Roots Music Festival earlier this summer, and I am looking forward to several upcoming trips with my family. I recently ran in VA Momentum's Valley 4th Run (5K) and felt both accomplished and old to have been an age group winner. Accomplished for winning my age group... and old for having moved up to the 45 - 54 age group... which is probably also why I was able to win my age group. ;-) But, as a client pointed out... better to feel accomplished and old... than to just feel old!  Before we get started on the latest data on our local housing market, each month I offer a giveaway for readers of my market report. This month I'm giving away a $50 gift card to Broad Porch Coffee. If you haven't checked out their new location on Court Square, you should. I recommend the bread pudding... and many other items on their food and drink menu. Click here to enter to win the gift card. And now, let's take a look at what has been happening in our local housing market over the first half of 2024...  The chart above captures all home sales in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County as reported in the HRAR MLS. I'm noting a few things... [1] Despite a 9% decrease in sales when we compare the past 12 months to the 12 months before that... there has been an 8% increase in home sales when comparing the first six months of 2024 to the first six months of 2023. So... home sales seem to be increasing again in 2024 as compared to where things were in 2023. [2] We have only seen a 3% increase in the median sales price when comparing the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2023... compared to a 7% increase when we look back 12 months compared to the prior 12 months. So... it seems that price increases may be slowing a bit. Read that again, though, prices are still increasing... just more slowly than they had been. But let's dig a bit deeper into a few subsets of the market, starting with detached homes...  When looking only at detached homes (which does not include duplexes, townhomes or condos) we find... [1] There have been 7% more home sales in the first half of 2024 compared to the first half of 2023... which is pretty similar to the 8% increase in the overall market. [2] The median sales price of detached homes has increased 10% in the first half of 2024 to a median sales price of $385,150. That is to say that half of single family homes sold in the first half of 2024 sold for $385,150 or more... and half sold for $385,150 or less. Now, how about those attached homes...  When looking only at attached homes (duplexes, townhomes, condos) we find that... [1] There have been 9% more attached home sales in the first half of this year as compared to the first half of last year. [2] The median sales price of attached homes has risen 9% to $310,000. Again... that means that half of attached homes (that have sold) have sold for $310K or higher, and half sold for $310K or lower. Now what about just the City of Harrisonburg...  It has been a bit harder to find a home to buy in the City this year... with 14% fewer homes selling in the first half of the year as compared to the same timeframe last year. At least part of this is explained by the large number of new homes being built in the County and the small number being built in the City. Without much "for sale" housing being built in the City, the number of homes selling in the City relies almost entirely on resale homes -- current homeowners deciding to sell. Perhaps the limited supply of homes selling in the City is why we have seen a larger (16%) increase in the median sales price of homes sold in the City thus far in 2024. In contrast, in the County...  Perhaps due to the larger number of new homes being built in Rockingham County, we have seen a 16% increase in the number of home sales taking place in the County in the first half of this year compared to the first half of last year. The median sales price, however, has only increased by 3% in Rockingham County compared to the 16% referenced earlier in the City of Harrisonburg. Since I've mentioned new home sales a few times, let's take a look at what is happening there...  As shown above, we have seen a 39% increase in new home sales in the first half of this year (191) compared to the same timeframe last year (137) though this really just brings us back to the same approximate amount that we saw two years ago (198) in the first half of 2022. Also, the median sales price of new homes has only increased 3% over the past year... from $343K-ish to $353K-ish. And if we strip out all of the new homes, here's what we find in the resale market...  Despite an increase in the overall number of homes that are selling in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County... there has actually been a 1% decrease in the number of existing homes that are selling. That's a small change, but it is headed in the opposite direction of our overall market. If the smaller number of existing home sales is at all related to a decreased number of sellers being willing to sell their homes, that might explain the slightly higher increase in the median sales price of existing home sales this year (+6%) as compared to the increase in the median sales price of all homes (3%). OK, taking a breath now... that's all of the charts and numbers. Now let's allow some graphs to help us visual learners understand the latest trends in our local real estate market...  We saw a LOT of home sales in May 2024... 144 of them... compared to only 114 the prior May. This left me at least partially wondering whether we would see fewer home sales this June than last June due to that particularly busy May. But this June outperformed last June, even if not by as much as the month of May. These two months of stronger sales (May, June) compared to last year have contributed to the overall increase in home sales between the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2024. Which is shown... here...  After several years (2022, 2023) of declining numbers of home sales in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, perhaps we will see an increase in 2024. Given the increase from 610 sales to 658 sales in the first half of 2023 and 2024, it seems likely that we will finish out 2024 with more than the 1,206 home sales seen last year. You can also see that turnaround in the pace of home sales here...  The blue line above is tracking the number of home sales taking place in a year's time, measured each month. As you can see, that metric has started to trend upwards again over the past six-ish months after over a year of declines. The green line above shows the median sales price, which has been steadily increasing for years. The median sales price is still increasing, but those increases might be slowing. Technically, the median sales price decreased a bit over the past month, but only by $35, so we'll wait to see what happens over the next few months before jumping to any conclusions. Here's another look at those same metrics of quantity of sales and home prices...  The green line (median sales price again) clearly seems to be going up (increasing) more slowly in 2024 than it has in previous years. Keep in mind, though, that the rate of price increase over the past few years has been 10% -- per year -- so a smaller increase in prices would certainly be expected at some point. The graph above also shows a few more past years history of the number of homes selling. The 1,206 homes sold in 2023 was the smallest number in more than five years (while not pictured - it was the slowest year since 2014) but we might see more home sales in 2024 than we did in 2023. Interestingly... when we strip out the attached homes (duplexes, townhouses, condos) we actually see a more steady increase in median sales prices...  And when we look only at the duplexes, townhomes and condos we see that slow down in price increases more clearly...  Shifting gears a bit, let's look at contract activity to take a guess at what the next few months of home sales might look like...  June marks the fourth month of stronger contract activity when comparing contracts signed this year to the same month last year -- though the contract signing frenzy cooled a bit in June. These stronger months of contract activity likely mean we will continue to see steady increases in home sales over the next few months. This same trend is seen when tracking pending sales...  Pending sales is a measure of how many homes are under contract, waiting to make it to settlement. There are currently 308 such homes... as compared to only 261 a year ago. This pending sales total in 2024 (red line) has been tracking well above where things were a year ago (blue line) since the start of the year. Lots of buyers and sellers signing contracts sometimes leads to lower levels of homes available for sale...  The last few months of strong contract activity has been followed by steady declines in the number of homes available for sale. Inventory levels have dropped from 185 homes for sale to 152 homes for sale over the past two months. These inventory levels in 2024 (red line) are still higher than they were a year ago (blue line), but that might change within the next few months. With so many homes going under contract, are they going under contract more quickly?  It seems so! The median "days on market" has been trending back downward again over the past few months... and the past year (plus) of data suggests that we might be starting to see some seasonality in this metric once again. In years gone by we would see homes go under contract more quickly in the spring/summer/fall than they would in the winter... though for the past few years (due to Covid, low interest rates) we saw homes go under contract rapidly regardless of the time of year. It seems we might be headed back to a market with a bit more seasonality when it comes to how quickly buyers are contracting to buy homes. But... I will also point out that this median days on market figure does not clearly show that there are plenty of homes that are taking longer than a week (or longer than a month) to go under contract. All homes are not going under contract within seven days... and while most homes are... that "most" is only 51% per how a "median" calculation works. Finally (alert, alert - last graph) mortgage interest rates have been bouncing around this year... but trending downward most recently...  Way back on the far left edge of this graph (above) you'll see that rates were below 5% in early 2022... but they have been above 6% since September 2022, and have been above 7% for six of the past 12 months. It has been a topsy-turvy world when it comes to mortgage interest rates over the past year. Some buyers may have purchased when rates were as high as 7.25% or 7.5%... though today's buyers are likely to be locking in below 7%. I am cautiously optimistic that we might get back down to the 6% - 6.5% range in 2024 or early 2025, but mortgage interest rate trends have been anything but predictable lately. And that brings us to the end of this month's overview of our local housing market. If you made it through all of the charts and graphs, kudos to you for educating yourself on the intricacies of our local housing market. If you plan to buy a home in the second half of 2024... get pre-approved for a mortgage if you haven't already and be sure to go see new listings of interest quickly once they hit the market given that many are still going under contract in a matter of days. If you plan to sell your home in the second half of 2024... you will likely still find selling conditions to be quite favorable, with high levels of buyer interest depending on your price range, property type and the location of your home. If I can be of help to you as you explore the possibility of buying a home, or selling your home, feel free to reach out to chat. You can reach me most easily by phone/text at 540-578-0102 or by email here. I hope you enjoy the remainder of your week (high temp of only 80 degrees tomorrow!) and that you find some time to get away this summer to relax and spend time with family and friends. Recent Articles:
| |
 |
 |
| Newer Post | home | Older Post |
Scott Rogers
Funkhouser Real
Estate Group
540-578-0102
scott@funkhousergroup.com
Licensed in the
Commonwealth of Virginia
Home Search
Housing Market Report
Harrisonburg Townhouses
Walk Through This Home
Investment Properties
Harrisonburg Foreclosures
Property Transfers
New Listings
