Essex County housing inventory: worse than you think

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After my article yesterday Marblehead inventory:even worse than you think I have looked at Essex County overall.

There are currently 1352 Single Family Homes (SFH) for sale in Essex County, down nearly 20% compared from 1660 a year ago at this time. But the position for buyers is even worse than it appears.

One of the numbers real estate agents follow is the number of days a property has been on the market (DOM). Last year MLS introduced a new measure, Days to Offer (DTO), which – yes- measures the number of days a property is on the market before it receives an accepted offer.

The theory behind DOM is that a house receives the greatest attention, from both buyers and agents, when it first comes on the market, but that as time moves on the listing becomes stale. In an active market such as exists now, a property sees the most activity and interest in the first 30 days.

With that in mind, let’s look at three categories: current inventory, pending sales and sales so far  2015. In each case I will show a pie chart of the overall picture and a table giving a breakdown by price band. I’ll summarize and add my conclusions at the end of the article.

Current Inventory
Light blue represents 0-29 DOM: 579 of 1352 houses for sale are in this category or 43%:

Essex_For_Sale

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Pending Sales
This category includes all houses which have an accepted offer but where closing has not yet occurred.

Note that the light blue slice is much bigger: 718 out of 1142, or 63%.

Essex_Pending_Chart

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Sales YTD
This category is all the houses that have closed in 2015 so far. Note that the light blue category, those which received an offer in 0-29 days, represents 423 of 1047, or 40%, very similar to the For Sale number:

Essex_Sold_Chart

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Summary

Essex_Summary

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

The key numbers are those for pending sales, as these are the most current figures on houses that have recently received an offer. Whereas 40% of the houses that have sold this year received an offer in under 30 days, fully 63% of all pending sales received an offer within 30 days of hitting the market. But only 43% of houses currently for sale have been on the market less than 30 days.

What do these numbers tell us?
In simple terms, houses are selling quickly. While it is understandable that houses took longer to sell during the winter months, in the current market houses are moving. And the market has little fresh inventory: only 40% of what is already a low inventory number has been on the market for less than 30 days.

There are two message for sellers and buyers each:
Sellers
This is a great time to list, but if your house has been on the market for more than 30 days it might be time to ask why: is it price or is it some other factor?

Buyers
Apart from the obvious – be ready to move quickly and make sure that financing is committed before you make an offer – check out houses that have been on the market for an extended time and may have been overlooked (it happens). You have more chance of having a lower-priced offer accepted on a “stale” listing than on one fresh to the market.

If you – or somebody you know – are considering buying or selling a home and have questions about the market and/or current home prices, feel free to contact me on 617.834.8205 or Andrew.Oliver@SothebysRealty.com.

Andrew Oliver is a Realtor with Harborside Sotheby’s International Realty Sotheby’s International Realty® is a registered trademark licensed to Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. Each Office Is Independently Owned and Operated

You can REGISTER to receive email alerts of new posts on the right hand side of the home page at www.OliverReports.com.

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If you – or somebody you know – are considering buying or selling a home and have questions about the market and/or current home prices, feel free to contact me on 617.834.8205 or Andrew.Oliver@SothebysRealty.com.

Andrew Oliver is a Realtor with Harborside Sotheby’s International Realty Sotheby’s International Realty® is a registered trademark licensed to Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. Each Office Is Independently Owned and Operated

You can REGISTER to receive email alerts of new posts on the right hand side of the home page at www.OliverReports.com.

@OliverReports

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