Podcast - 6/2/23

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay,

Jay Day and the day home team of real estate teams with our weekly real estate podcast rocking and rolling through the summer of 2023. What are we going with?

All right, let's talk about, as we roll into June, let's go over the stats for what happened in May. And then I'm not going to go into as deep of details because I feel like it's Groundhog Day. We've been dealing with similar stuff, but I want to talk about interest rates because last time we did the podcast, the numbers had changed dramatically from then. So, the gist of things in Frederick County, things are still improving, things are still moving quickly. Just to give an idea, in May for closings, homes that actually closed, we're looking at 270, the prior month was 257. The days on market went from six to five, and the median price went from 421 to 478.5. So basically, we're seeing, it's just everything is increasing.

Hey, this is cool. Jay, anybody thinking about selling their home here in June? These are the stats of what happened here in May. This is current. That's why we do these podcasts.

Oh yeah. And I mean, even now we're seeing the number of homes that are active for sale. Were only at 137 with 369 under contract.

Are you saying we are not reaching a monthly quota with these? Okay. All right.

Nope.

That that's been trending.

Yeah. Same in Carroll County. Carroll County, the sold units went from 127 to 169, from seven days to six days, and holding steady on price contracts went from 203 to 234, and we only have 80 active homes on the market in Carroll County. In Washington County, we're looking at a similar situation. Sold went from 93 to 136. That's a big difference. It went from 11 days to nine days and the median price went up by 10 grand. Homes that are available 143. So we are seeing their inventory tick up a little bit. Contract is 187. So again, we still have a situation where not enough supply for the demand of what people are looking for. Then we'll go over to West Virginia quickly, and we look over there and we have 59. Actually, this is a little different. We only had 59 settle where the month before we had 61, but the days on market dropped from 11 to seven and the sales price increased.

Jay:
The median sales price went from three 50 to 400,000 and for availability of homes on the market in Jefferson County, it went from 45 to 58. So again, still in a situation where not enough inventory is available. We go over to Berkeley County sold, we went from 143 to 127. Days on market was cut from 12 to nine, and the sale prices, the median sale price went from 275 to 295. So a $20,000 jump. And as we look at what's active on the market, we had a small increase from 126 to 137 homes. However, the contracts went from 194 to 238. So still heavy, heavy demand and not enough supply. Adams County, we go over there, not a big change. We went from 76 homes on the market that were available to 80. We went from 77 that settled to 87. Days on market was steady at seven for that.

Jay:
Contract went from 137 to 181, and it went from 10 days to eight days. So again, we're seeing things are moving a little faster and the numbers are just continuing to increase. And we'll end with Franklin County, we went from 101 sold to 117. We went from 179 under contract to 192, and then active, we only increase from 121 to 127 again under a month supply of inventory. The days on market there for the ones that settled, dropped from 12 to seven. So candidly, we're, we're still rocking and rolling. Now, one of the things and how I want to end this podcast is on interest rates. So when we did our last podcast, the rates were in the sixes and now they ended up hitting over 7% for conventional non-government loans. And I mean, just to give guys an idea of what that means, we went from like 6.1 to 7.1.

Jay:
So it's not unusual in our market to see homes that are $800,000. So if we look at someone that was getting a loan for an $800,000 house just on the loan side of it, and it went from 6% to 7%, that's $526.02 different a month. Just over the course of a week because of interest rate changes.

That's a significant amount of money.

And even if we go with a modest price 450, and that's modest for Frederick County, it going from 6% to 7%, that's almost $300 more a month that people are paying. And the reality is, in the market, in the world we're in now where gas is more, groceries are more, that what used to maybe been discretionary funds is no longer discretionary. You know, need those to be able to finish your grocery shopping. So, I think what'll eventually happen is you would think things would start to slow a little bit just because of, again, over the course of a week, if you were looking to buy a house and you didn't lock the rate in and you were looking at a house that was in the eights. I mean, you're talking over $500 difference a month, that's huge.

When they were incredibly low, you said you people who listen to this podcast, you constantly said, these will change, this will change. You need to jump on this now because we don't know where they're going to go. And then when they change, we don't know if it's going up or down. We have no idea how to predict this.

And I said, typically what happens when things go up, they tend to, it's funny because it's the opposite of gravity. Things drop fast. However, when it comes to money and interest rates, things tend to skyrocket very quickly. I mean, think about it, even when we had the crazy increase with gas prices, I mean, they're more now than they were a couple of years ago, but they're almost become a new norm where we're like, oh, it's not too bad. It's like upper threes. That's not horrible, but it was in the low twos before. Sure, but we got hit with the fives and you're like, oh man, $5 a gallon. This is insane. Anyway, interest rates do have an impact on things. If you're sitting on the fence still and unsure, there's no guarantees on things with what's going to happen with the rates. I know a lot of people were thinking, okay, we're going to wait for rates to drop and I know home prices are going to drop. And we've been consistently delivering updated news and stats. And as you can see, home prices have not dropped in our area in any of the surrounding counties, and there's no indicators showing that that should or could happen. On the residential side, we don't talk about commercial real estate. If you look in the news, there are a lot of people that are predicting that commercial is going to have a major downfall. And there are very specific though that the expectation is commercial only, not residential. So

That's why we do these podcasts. Got a home of the week.

I do 6412 Wild Plum Drive in Frederick, listed for 400,000. Just hit the market. And we actually have an open house this Saturday from 12 to two. Give you some details on this home. It's an end unit town home, a Ballenger Run, filled with natural light, additional windows because it's an end unit, which makes it a little bit nicer. The primary suite and en suite bathroom. There's luxury vinyl, plank flooring. Main level living has stainless steel appliances. There's a large deck. There's the bedrooms. I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff with this house, this townhouse, when we look at it, it's fairly new. It was built in 2020. The neighborhood that it's in offers amenities such as walking paths, community pool. Like I said, it's a great looking house. All you have to do, if you want to see what the pictures look like, go to wfre.com. Look up Tom and Jay's real estate podcast. If you like what you see there, you can click on a button on our website and you can schedule a showing. Or if you don't want to talk to an agent and you just want to walk through the house, there is an open house again this Saturday, June 3rd, 12 to 2:00 PM and the address 6412 Wild Plum Drive in Frederick, Maryland.

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay

Weekly Real Estate Podcast. Thank you for listening and tell your friends all about it.