Where Buyers and Sellers Stand in Our Market
What’s been happening the last 60 days across the Wasatch Front market?
Single-family homes are entering market much more slowly than buyers would like. Only 1,532 have been listed since January 1st. Compare that to the nearly 25,000 homes that sold in 2016 and you can understand their frustration.
Pair that with the fact that 2,204 homes have moved into pending status (meaning the offer was accepted between the buyer and seller and it’s waiting to close) since the beginning of the year and you can see there are a lot more homes going off the market than coming onto it. 2,538 homes have sold since the beginning of the year, which means we’ve had a total of 4,742 homes that were for sale come off the market.
Moving into the condo and townhome market, we see a similar pattern in that we have an undersupply of inventory. There are 557 condos and townhomes currently for sale, with 752 in a pending status. 750 condos and townhomes have sold since the beginning of the year.
All markets are driven by supply and demand. In real estate, it’s considered a level market when there is a four- to six-month supply of homes available. We currently have about a 1.5-month supply of single-family homes. This favors the seller considerably. We also have about 1.75-month supply of townhomes and condos. This too favors sellers.
“Our market favors sellers right now.”
If you are a buyer in this market, hire an agent who either has immediate access to homes that come on the market that fit your criteria or knows about homes getting ready to be listed, which we call pre-list properties.
On our team, we call this our VIP Buyer System, which guarantees our clients priority access to all listings from all brokerages. They also have advanced notice of our pre-list properties as well as a full-time buyer’s agent whose only job is to get them in front of these homes and weed out the competition.
If you are a seller, this may be your time to shine. Take advantage of staging and get professional photos taken. You only get once chance at a first impression, and almost all buyers start looking for homes online.
Be sure your agent launches the home live on the market to all buyers at the same time and has a grand opening that weekend. That way, all interested buyers have an equal opportunity to view your home. This also ensures you won’t have to show your home weeks or months at a time and increases the likelihood that you’ll generate multiple offers and create an auction-like environment to sell your home for the most amount of money possible.
If you have any other questions about our market or are looking to buy or sell a home, feel free to call me or send me an email. I’d be happy to help!
