Here we are in a new month and a new year. The housing market is still moving along…it just has slowed down a bit compared to the few torrid paced years we had before. We are also coming into a new year and out of the holidays which is a slower time of year for home sales in general every year. The FED has raised rates again, but they are still staying in the same ballpark of rates that has been the average over the past 30 or so years. The past 30 years the average after the peaks and valleys has been around 6 to 7% and thats where we are. I don’t see 4% or less coming back anytime soon. It would be great, but for all of you holding out for that again..good luck. Right now if you plan on buying a home in the near future… soon… if not now is a good time if you want to have more choices and be able to take your time. The buying cycle has slowed down to more of a normal pace and buyers and sellers can breathe and real contract negotiations and home inspections can go back on again. Buyers have more to choose from and sellers actually have to paint and fix problems that were being overlooked in the past months and couple years. Springtime historically is going to be busier so start looking now if you are ready. Prices might drop more later, but then people are going to start jumping back into the maket and the deals will be there, but have more competition again less time to make a decision.

In the info graphic above with information from Florida Realtors Association for January… it shows, that as you would expect there are more homes on the market than this same time last year, but there are less than last month. Which means they are not sitting on the market along time. While we have 18% less new homes on the market than this same time last year …we have almost 20% more new homes on the market than last month. As we come further out of winter and the holidays, people are deciding its time to sell and stop waiting. As you can also see our months of supply of inventory is higher by 0.7 months than a year ago this time, as expected from factors like inflation, higher rates and higher home prices, but what you also need to know it is down .10 months from last month which means it is not stagnating.

Median Time to Contract has ticked up bit, it was 31 days in December and 31 days this time last year. It is now 41 days this past month, meaning homes are sitting longer like I said, but not alot longer. Its natural for them to sit longer if people have more choices and as buyers take more time to think about what they want to do. Also the homes that were over priced before and their sellers refused to make price drops have also added to this number.

In the new pending sales box you can see that we have 20% less new pending sales than last year at this same time, but we have 18% more new sales than last month. The major news networks are reporting slows and price drops everywhere which is true and happening, but most of that is from national news on a national level. Central Florida is still growing and still has a housing shortage. So we have to look at and make decisions based on a local level not a national one.

So here in our area, even after the houses sitting a little longer, more new inventory and more doom and gloom from the news… the median percent of list price recieved is still only down 4.1% from last year and only down .2% from last month. Thats not a big drop for what is supposed to be a housing correction. Most of the experts in the Real Estate field have predicted that homes would drop around 5-10% and the news pundits and other experts have predicted that it will go more than that, we will see. Again most of that is national news and we live here so things are not going to be uniform for markets for the whole country.