Podcast - 11/3/23

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay.

Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams with our weekly real estate podcast. Coming in now to the holiday season, the last couple of months of the year, Jay, where do we stand in the real estate industry?

Well, first I need to address that too. Isn't it crazy that we're in November?

I know, man. It's unbelievable.

I was just talking to Christina about that and I'm like,

Three weeks today from Black Friday we're less than three weeks away from Thanksgiving.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

You going to be cooking that Turkey at home this year?

So the goal, the funny thing was I was supposed to do a test run on my Traeger and that's when I realized my time is running out because I don't want to do the test run on Thanksgiving and not do it right.

A test run on what? You're going to be cooking that burger or something?

Yeah, turkey on the traeger outside.

Oh, on the traeger. You going to smoke that? Then just do two, then you smoke a turkey, cook one in the oven. Then we'll see how that works out.

Yeah, we'll have to see. Well, and then I have to start off today wishing my better half a Happy Birthday.

Is that today?

It is today, yes.

Wow. Happy Birthday, Christina. And I can back Jay up on the better half part of that.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

So let's talk some stats because it's been a while since we got into any, we didn't really get into details in October. So what I'm looking at the stats now, I'm comparing early September, to be more specific, September 7th to November 1st are when these data points came from. So Frederick County, we are still at a under one month supply of inventory. Homes that are on the market, 201. And when we looked back in September, it was only 155. So that did increase, homes under contract 229 homes. It was 275. So we had a much bigger issue with inventory back in September, but now we still have under a month's supply of inventory. It's just not, we're getting close. When you really look at it, we're 28 homes away from having a month's supply of inventory. So we're getting closer to having that month's supply. For homes that sold, we went from 269 to 204. And again, the one thing I want to point out is the homes that go under contract and sold, as we get into this time of year, things do tend to slow down because of the holidays, so that shouldn't be too shocking. But I wanted to get into, so the homes over the last 30 days, so October, that sold, again, that was 204, of those still 113 sold for above asking price. And when we look at that, it's almost 56% of the homes sold for over asking price in Frederick County. Now, homes that sold below asking price, 52. That equals 25.49%, so almost 26%. And homes that were listed and sold at the price they were listed at was 39, and that ends up coming in at 19%.

But some of these homes sold under list price. They could have been overpriced to start with.

Correct.

I'm just learning from doing all the podcasts with you on the pricing of these homes is fascinating.

And then buyers that got closing help paid for by the seller is up to 40 of those homes. So we're at almost 20% of all the homes that sold in October. The sellers did give some closing help to the buyer. Now we'll go over to Carroll County. Carroll County, we have a situation where 121 homes that are active, 142 that are under contract. So again, under a month's supply of inventory, we had 111 homes sell. And with those, the median days on market was 9. The active listings, the median days on market is 27. So the one thing we are seeing across the board is the homes are taking a little bit longer to sell because again, when we had that 2% bump in interest rate so far this year, again, we went from 6 to 8%, pretty much certain people no longer qualify. So those people fell out of the buyer demographic and buyer pool for a period of time. So we are going to have less people that are capable of closing. Now out in Carroll County, homes that sold with seller help 26% of the homes. So that's a pretty significant number. You had a 26% chance that you'd have to give buyer closing help to get to the closing table. Now, Washington County, we have the opposite, 187 homes on the market, only 158 under contract. So we have now hit over a month supply of inventory. Again, nothing to panic about. It's still considered a seller's market when you have up to three months supply of inventory.

Really been a long time since we've heard those words talking about any of these counties.

Yeah, yeah, it is. And when we look at those that actually ended up having to give closing help for closing in Washington County, 31.4%. So that's the biggest number for the areas in Maryland that hit our listenership here. Now we'll go to West Virginia, active 70. Before we only had 61, contract 62. Last time we had 69. So again, we're in a situation here where we actually just barely have more homes, more than a month's supply of inventory. So Jefferson County,

That's Jefferson County, West Virginia,

And just under 25% of the homes that sold there, the sellers gave buyer closing help. Now we go to Berkeley County, active 203 homes. This is a big change. So we have 203. The last time we pulled these numbers, it was only 142. That's a pretty big difference.

That's a big number of homes going on the market.

Yeah, yeah. Now contract, we had 200, now we're at 157. So we are over a month supply of inventory in Berkeley County as well. And get this, the ones that sold, that need to give seller help, 43%.

Wow, that's quite a bit. That's a big number. Yeah.

Yeah, almost half of the sellers ended up having to do that. So we'll end with some of the data from Pennsylvania, and again, I have a whole lot more information. If you guys want more detailed data, you can just reach out to me. I just want to give sort of a broad overview. Adams County, when we look at Adams County, we have 106 homes on the market. We were at 97, so that's a slight increase. Now get this, last time we did the report, only 98 homes were under contract, now 120. So there's an uptick in contract activity in Adams County. So they are under a month's supply of inventory and only 15.6. So almost 16% of the homes out there, the sellers had to give closing help to a buyer. So Adams County has the lowest number of seller help that was provided. Out of all the areas we're going to be chatting about Maryland, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

And Jay in the day home team licensed in all these states. We should point out, if you're wondering why we're talking about wild, wonderful, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, and DC.

Yes. And Franklin County, we always like to talk about, because a lot of people just go right over the line in Washington County, 177 active homes, 128 under contract. So when we look at that, we actually have more than a month's supply of inventory and they're coming in at about 21% of the homes. The seller gave closing help to the buyer. So the one thing I can say in general, of all these areas, we are still seeing an appreciation in values. We're just seeing the appreciation at a lower percentage. We're still in a situation where the market, we overall, we still have very low supply compared to what's considered normal. It's just, I think everybody forgot what normal was because we haven't

We have forgotten what normal was. And I don't know if we're ever going to see that again in any capacity for anything in our lives.

Yeah, I don't either. Well, one of the funny things is on our podcast, I said we'd probably hit 8% this year when the experts said we wouldn't. And guess what we did?

We did. Yeah, we did. Man.

I'm hoping because the year's not over yet. I'm really hoping we don't get over eight, but who knows? The crystal ball is broke. I guesstimated on the last one and I ended up being right.

And you shot high. You probably shot high thinking hell will never go far. That won't go that high. Yes.

Yeah. I thought, I'm like, well, the way things were moving, I was like, they're going to have to do that with inflation. Everything else, it's just a harsh reality of the market that we're in. So let's talk about the house of the week and then we can wrap this up.

What do you got?

2029 Sams Creek Road in Westminster, Maryland. This home is listed in the mid upper fives. It is an all brick rancher situated on 1.46 acres. Obviously main level living, laundry, everything is on the main level. Bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, three spacious bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a formal dining room, a formal living room, a large family room with a fireplace. There's an all-weather, Florida room off of the family room. The lower level is partially finished with a rec room, and then there's a massive amount of space under there that's unfinished that you can add more rooms you can use for storage. In addition, there is an attached two car garage, and the first thing I noticed when we went to list this home, we're driving down, we pull up, it has a nice entrance and the lawn is absolutely meticulous. It actually made me think of you. I know how particular you are about the lawn.

I love landscaping. Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

It's absolutely stunning. The home inside is a little, it's got great bones. If somebody wants to modernize it, they can. But one and a half acres, all bricks solid construction. If you want to take a look at it, go to wfre.com. Look up Tom and Jay's real estate podcast. You'll see photos. You'll even see drone and aerial photography on this one. If you like what you see, we can schedule a private tour.

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay.

Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams with our weekly real estate podcast. We'll be back next Friday. Thank you so much for listening. Tell your friends all about it.