Coronavirus Market Stat Update 5

Taking a look at the stats from yesterday, March 26, the number of new listings in the MLS was 188, which is down about 30% from what we have seen on Thursdays over the past month. While that is a notable drop, it is also still a large number of homes hitting the market during the shelter-in-place order (the vast majority of these listings are Williamson and Travis).

The number of contracts is, as I've mentioned before, harder to qualify because of the lag time so many agents have in changing the status. If I go back a few days so that I can get what are hopefully settled numbers, the number of contracts from Sunday to Wednesday (373) was down 34% over those same days the week before and down 39% from the prior week. These numbers are consistent with what I have found over the past few days of using this rolling count.

The number of homes withdrawn was 19 which is fairly similar to the last several days. The number of homes marked as "temporarily off market" was 50, down a bit from the prior 3 days.

I have always believed that buyers know about changes in the market before sellers do. Under this order, fewer buyers are willing to tour homes and write offers. The number of sellers willing to put their house on the market, while down, is not down by as much. These new listings likely had photos taken before the order was put in place as I know some photographers are honoring the order while others are still working. Perhaps we are just seeing homes that were ready before the order deciding to go ahead to the market while the number of homes that will be ready for the market drops over the next week. Again, we will just need to wait a big longer to really get numbers on how the real estate market is reacting during coronavirus.

As always, I am available by phone, text, and email to answer your questions privately or comment below if you wish. If you are wanting to talk about buying or selling, we can set up a Zoom conference call. Stay healthy!

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