How long will it take to sell MY home?

My posts yesterday showed the supply of  homes for sale  in terms of months of current supply. That’s one useful piece of information.

But if you are thinking of selling, or have a house currently on the market, the question you want to ask is: How long will it take to sell MY home?”

First, let’s look at those Single Family Homes (SFHs) that are currently Under Agreement (UAG), meaning they have an accepted offer. Here’s the breakdown by Days on Market (DOM) and by price:

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Unfortunately, the MLS, in its infinite wisdom, changed its definition of Under Agreement recently. Without going into details (I did this in a fit of pique in this article) the result is to reduce the DOM in MLS for houses since May 17.

Because of the change in MLS reporting, I would draw your attention to the DOM for 1-30 and 31-60 days combined. Note that 52 of the 69 houses UAG (75%) reached that status within 60 days. And 13 went UAG in 7 days.

That’s the overall market. The second part of the table shows what has happened in your price range. You can play around with these numbers any way you want, and I caution that percentages become of dubious value when applied to small numbers, but 80% of 59 homes under $1million went UAG in less than 60 days, while 50% of just 10 over $1 million did so.

Now let’s look at the competition today: what is currently on the market. As before, the first part of the table shows the breakdown by DOM overall, and the second part breaks it down by price.

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

Source: MLS, Oliver Reports

There are two main uses of this data. First, if you are thinking of selling, you should be able to get a good idea of how long it may take to do so. Bear in mind that the next 30 days or so are likely to see a lot of activity, as buyers want to be living in their new homes before Labor Day. And because, with mortgage rates rising sharply recently, buyers are getting anxious not to miss what are historically still low rates.

The second use of this data is for sellers whose houses are not getting offers within the norms shown in this table. The old joke is that Realtors only have one solution to a house that is not selling: cut the price. Clearly, the top end of the market is still suffering from a lack of demand, making price cutting a dubious proposition. But sellers at lower levels whose house is not selling may need to consider…..cutting the price.