A Softer Real Estate Market in 2019?

With three months gone this year, it’s looking like Summit County is going to see a softer real estate market in 2019. In a strong seller’s market like we have been seeing, a little softening isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. The number of residential sales so far this year is declining. That decline is not hindering pricing, however, but it is helping to build our inventory.

Sales Numbers

Residential Sales in Summit County dipped in March. It’s the 2nd month in 2019 that had lagging sales when compared to 2018. With only 85 sales this March, residential sales are down 18.3% vs March of 2018. Having 2 out of 3 months with declining sales, you can probably guess residential sales are down for the first quarter as well. There have been  11.8% fewer sales in Q1 2019 than Q1 2018. And 21.5% fewer sales than Q1 2017.

Average Sale Price

Even with falling sales, the average sale price continues to rise. The average sale price in the last 12 months ending in March was $783,121. That is a 12.1% increase over the same time last year when the average sale price was $698,343. Like with most statistics, average sale price is a number that needs more statistics behind it to know what it means. In March, of the 85 residential sales, 21 were for homes at or above $1,000,000. That’s nearly 25% of the sales. March of 2018 had 18 sales. However those sales were only 17.3% of the total number of sales. Even though the number of sales have fallen, the number of high end sales actually rose. That’s going to increase average sale price every time.

Residential Inventory

Sales are falling, average prices are rising, what is happening with the Summit County inventory? It’s rising too. We currently have 450 residential properties for sale in the entire county. Compare that with 352 about a year ago and we have a 28.4% increase. We do have a lot more new development happening around the county. 30% of our current inventory is new construction.

Often the combination of declining sales and rising inventory will stifle pricing. The Summit County real estate market could handle some flattening pricing. It’s still unclear if that will happen yet this year but the softer real estate market we are seeing makes me think it is coming. The only question is when.