📣 📣 A HALF-BILLION DOLLAR MONTH!!! 📣 📣
That’s right! NWA residential sales in August surpassed $500M. Impressive!! That represented a 13% increase from last month’s total residential sales dollars.
Median sold price for a property hit the $350K mark; a threshold we have only met 1 other month in NWA history (June 2024). The average price per square foot remained the same as last month. The ratio of sales price to original list price is still 100%; meaning there are still more houses selling over original list-price than properties selling below the original list-price. All three of these metrics being up indicate sellers are still in firm control of the market.
On the note of price per square foot… Since January of 2022 to August 2024, the average $$/SQFT has gone from $182/SQFT to $220/SQFT. That’s a 20.8% increase. Another way of looking at this is the median SQFT of a sold residential house in NWA has hovered around 1,800 SQFT for the last 4 year; meaning it takes $32,400 more to buy that same 1,800 house today versus January 2022. Or yet another way of looking at it, if you were the owner of an 1,800 SQFT house in January 2022, you’ve gained about $32K in equity for doing nothing. That’s market appreciation.
Months of inventory (MOI) interpreted as the number of months it would take to sell all active listings based on the current rate of buyers closing on houses and if no new listing enter the market. MOI has held a 4 for the fifth consecutive month; an indication that current buying-rates are keeping pace with new-listing rates. As a rule of thumb, many real estate professionals consider a MOI of 12 to be an indication the market has transitioned from a sellers-market to a buyers-market. A MOI of 4 for August 2024 is yet another indicator we are in a robust sellers-market.
New listings and active listings (both 1-month and 12-month changes) saw typical fluctuations; however, expired listings was up 24.4% from last August. That is the largest percent change between consecutive Augusts for expired listings in the last 10+ years. In fact, all other expired listing from one August to the next August have had less than a 10% change (up or down) in the last 10 years. We don’t have data to confirm my suspicions, but we wonder if the changes from the National Association of Realtors Settlement, which took effect in mid-August, had some impact on this…it’s just a point to ponder.
That sums up another productive month of residential sales in NWA. If you have any questions about the market or need any real estate related advice, reach out!