My family and I were lucky to get to go to New York City this past month and had a great week of museum and theater going and walking in various parks and all around the town. When the country has been on the brink of or in a recession in the past, I have found that the feeling of this is palpable everywhere in NYC. The financial markets are such an integral part of everything there that it’s on everyone’s minds and you can feel it. I did not find a gloomy Gotham. Instead, I am happy to report that on this visit I found no such feeling present anywhere we went. It was spring, people were happy, energetic, engaged and hopeful. What does this mean? We will see over the coming months.
To aid in navigating the real estate market, we are so excited to present a new tool that I hope you will bookmark and use frequently – our own custom page of Dynamic Market Statistics – which I also use below in my analysis of the current market conditions.
We have been finding the real estate market to be slower than the past few years, but as the charts below show, condos are on par for price with early 2019, sharply up from 2018 prices last fall. Homes are trading at early 2020 prices also a tick up from last fall. Condos are trading on average below asking price and SFH are trading above, at about 104% down from an average of over 125% last spring. But the real story is in the number of units being sold. For all areas covered by this newsletter, sales volume for the 1st quarter of 2023 are the lowest in the last five years. You might think this is because no one is buying due to higher interest rates. But the lower sales volume is being driven as much by a lack of inventory – available homes to sell, which has also fallen to historic lows. One factor causing this is seller hesitancy/fear of not getting a good price because it isn’t a good time to sell. The prices being rolled back two years still means that they are higher than any previous year in all of history. So it’s not a bad time to sell. And because of confusion in the market place, it is a good time to buy if you can find something you want – and making it a particularly good time to trade properties. With the right guidance, this is an ideal market to make an advantageous first purchase, trade or sale. Other people hesitating creates a uniquely excellent opportunity for you and yours to achieve your goals and outperform the market. And we would be delighted to help!
