Podcast - 7/7/23

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay.

Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams with a weekly Midsummer Real Estate podcast. What's up, bud?

Besides being exhausted from Party in the Park,

That was so much fun. Jay, we had such a good time. Can you believe our local musicians, how talented these guys are?

Oh yeah, That was great.

Had a wonderful time, man.

Yeah, it was really good time. There was a great crowd. I know there were some changes where we had to move some configuration stuff and it worked out for us because we ended up on the other side, under a tree in the shade, which was pretty awesome.

I saw it right off the bat. You guys are going to be in the shade here all day. Bingo

Yeah, I always was envious, to be very honest, from when I was on the other side of the park looking over. I'm like, man,

There was people over there,

I'm like, they've got the best spot.

They're under the trees.

The only thing that could have been better was I know sometimes South Mountain Creamery is out there, and I know the spot they normally hit is the spot that was next to us. So I was looking forward to being able to just go over and get some of that fresh ice cream.

Did you have your root beer mug from the root beer guy?

I didn't because we were on the other side this year.

You're on the other side away from that too. And we had a great time. Thank you. Hey, thank you. You Chase, Chase Beckham. You brought our headliner on at the Party in the Park. He was great. We had a wonderful time. Thank you for your support of WFRE, man.

Oh, man. I don't even know how many years we've been doing the Party in the Park. It's been a long time.

We've been at this for a while.

Yeah, it's, it's a great time and it's awesome. We were able to get stuff out for free where people can come out and enjoy themselves. And I said, it's always a good time, but let's talk on our last podcast. It was sort of at an odd time, so I couldn't get the stats. I wanted to get through the month of June to get all the statistics out there.

I love stat week. I love these stats, man.

This is real time. I actually pulled this information. The data was pulled yesterday, so when I say yesterday, that is Thursday. So everything is as almost real time as it can be. All right, let's talk about Frederick County. Frederick County, the market is on fire is what I'm going to say. Where we are, we have 127 homes in Active, 67 in Coming Soon. That is less active homes than we had last time we chatted. Under Contract 341 homes. Sold 314, that closed. The interesting thing is the days on market. Our actives are 17, our contracts are 6, and our solds are 6. So again, if you're priced right within the first week, your home should be sold. Get this stat too. In Frederick County, 61.78% of the homes sold above asking price. So more than half of the homes sold for over what they were asking, and they sold in less than a week. The challenge is the inventory. So when you look at that, we have 127 homes available, 341 went under contract. That's .37 months of inventory, well under. That's like a third of a month of inventory if nothing else hit the market. So still, if you're out there listening and you're thinking, when's the best time to sell? I mean, the prices are up, the stats are good. I mean, when we look at what the average, I mean the median price for homes under contract last month it was 449,900. This month it's 485,000. The median price for the homes that are on the market is up to 575,000. No better time.

What do you tell people who want to buy in Frederick County? What do you tell people? Say, look, I really need to move there. I need to move there. What's my options?

Well, we tell 'em they got to bring their A game. Yeah, you got to bring your A game. And the reality is we tell 'em, okay, so if you're looking, the first thing is here's what the expectation should be. If you're looking to buy here, almost 62% of the homes that sold, sold for more than what they were asking for. So if you think you want to come in and try to negotiate and get a sweet deal, this may not be the time for you. And again, it's just giving real data. It's not like we're making things up. It's when you give people and show them real time, like, hey, I know you want to try to negotiate. I know you think you know, may want to get a good deal because the interest rates are up. Well, this may not be the area for you to do that in. And then we'll go over to Carroll County. Carroll County's got some pretty good stats going too. Carroll County, we're at 94 homes on the market with a median price of 504,000. Last month, the median price was 467,000. Under Contract, 213 with a median price of 425,000. Sold 175, with a median price of 460,000. That's up from 425,000. The homes under contract and sold have a median days on market of 6. And when I do the stats, again, I do the numbers 0.44 a month supply of inventory. So under a half month supply of inventory in Carroll County. Now we'll go over to Washington County. Washington County, we've got 141 homes on the market. Last time we chatted a month ago about this, it was 143. Their median price is up to 369,000 from 349,000. Contracts stayed steady, 187 last time we chatted, 187 again. It always weirds me out when I see that the number's exactly the same. That's a really odd situation, but it is what it is.

Well, I noticed the numbers available was just 144 and 143. That's pretty close.

Oh yeah. And Coming Soon was 22 and 23. So, Sold was up from 136 to 153. The median price for sold was up from 295,000 to 305,000. So all the homes that settled over the 30 days, they sold for 10,000 more in a median range for the month prior. So Washington County, now, they're not as low inventory as we are with Carroll and Frederick, but they're 0.75. So they're three quarters of a month, not half a month, not less. Now we'll go to our buddies over in West Virginia. I love West Virginia. It's always a great place to go and do real estate in. People are wonderful. They call it wild and wonderful West Virginia, but I think the people are actually absolutely wonderful out there. I've had some of the best clients.

I agree 100%. I make a lot of West Virginia jokes with Diana Gibson in the morning. But she's got it coming.

Yeah. We got to tease her a little bit. She's got some tough skin.

So she can take it. Yeah.

Active properties, 67 with a median price of 434,000. Under Contract, 76, the median price of 374,950. Sold up from 59 to 69. The median price staying stable at 400,000. Now when we look at those of active versus what's under contract, they're at 0.88, so they're the closest to a month supply of inventory. But remember, a seller's market is still considered even up to three months of inventory. So we're still under one. That's the closest of the areas that has one month of inventory. Now we'll go over to Berkeley County. Berkeley, we've got 143 homes on the market. Under Contract, 195. Sold, 170. So the sold were up, the contract was down a little bit, and active is increased by 7 homes. Again, very, very minimal. And they're at 0.73 month supply of inventory. Now we'll end up in Pennsylvania. Adams County. Adams County is holding strong as well, Coming Soon, 5 homes. Last time we chatted, there was 12. Active homes, 83. Last time there was 80. And when we're looking at that, the median price is 339,900. Under Contract, 139 homes. And the median days on market was 9 for them. Sold 105, up from 87 with a median price of 271,000. And out there, I didn't give the stat for all of the other areas, but I'm going to give it for this one because the homes, all of the 105 homes that sold in the last 30 days, only 11.43% gave seller help. That's the lowest in all the counties that we were covering on this. They had the lowest percentage odds of getting seller help, if you're a buyer.

What do you mean? Explain? What do you mean by getting seller help?

So that would be that they ask the seller to give some type of concession to help offset some closing cost. They may say, give me $5,000 in closing help, or $3,000 in closing help, whatever number is, but they had the lowest odds. The county that you had the strongest odds of getting closing help in was actually Berkeley County at 32.94. So almost 1/3.

Is it an anomaly or is there a reason for that?

It's because the closing costs are expensive.

Yeah, they're expensive. Everybody wants help.

And realistically, people need to have a lot of cash to bring to the table now. Or let's say the houses need a couple things where people before, if they can get the closing help, they may end up replacing carpet. If they have to pay all the closing costs, they may not be able to do some of the things they want because it takes a portion of their cash. And we'll end with Franklin County. Franklin County, we're looking at 12 homes in Coming Soon. 141 in Active. We got 191 Under Contract. Last month, we were 192 Under Contract, so staying pace there. Sold were up from 117 to 121. And what we're seeing also is the Sold, the median price went up from 255,000 to 260,000. The Under Contract median price went from 253,950 to 259,900. The Actives are staying steady, the median, the month before was 314,900, and the median price today is 314,900. So hanging in there steady. What all this means is, again, it's still a seller's market. The interest rates have been climbing. We've hit over 7% again, now we're back down in the sixes. But it's not really having, I would say the profound effect with the interest rates we're having is actually on the amount of people that are listing their homes for sale. It's not slowing the people down that are buying, as we've talked about, because if it was, we would see the inventory growing. The issue is that a lot of people are having a hard time saying, well, why would I sell my house that I have a 3% mortgage at and buy something new at 6.75%? And that's a legit question. I mean, I probably wouldn't do it.

That's why you call the pros. And another thing, if you're listening to this for the first time, the reason Jay is talking about Pennsylvania and West Virginia is because you're licensed in all these states.

Yes. And it's funny cause I keep saying I'm going to bring Virginia stats and I don't because, I don't know, and we do Virginia, maybe I'll start adding them. I have to start to be able to have historical data too, so I understand. But we've been doing a fair amount down in Clark County, Frederick County, Loudoun County. So if you're listening and you're in Virginia, we definitely handle that area. I spent quite a bit of time in Winchester this past week, helping clients out down there. Virginia is a beautiful, beautiful area too.

Winchester, Virginia's a beautiful area.

The downtown is super cool

It's spectacular. It really is.

Yeah. Very well. I mean, went down to one of these stone oven pizzeria places. It was awesome. I took one of my clients there when we were doing a walkthrough of one of the homes that they are looking purchase.

Got a home of the week.

I do 424 Fuhrman Mill Road in Hanover, Pennsylvania. If you like log homes, you're not going to want to miss this. Listed at $495,000, this is a one of a kind log cabin on a quiet road in Hanover, Pennsylvania. The home has three bedrooms, one full and one half bath. It's an open concept. It has a loft overlooking the main level, vaulted ceilings, radiant heat throughout. The main level has solid oak floors, main level living with an entry level bedroom, upgraded kitchen, fully finished walkout basement, tons of parking, a detached two-car garage, a 30x32 enclosed pioneer building, a beautiful wraparound porch. A little bit of everything here. In the cooler months, you can snuggle up by the freestanding gas fireplace. Like I said, just that whole feel of a log home. When you look online and see the pictures and you can see out the window, you can just picture yourself being there with the snow coming down. I don't know. To me, it's an absolutely stunning house. I love log homes. If you go to wfre.com, look up Tom and Jay's real estate podcast. You can see the home of the week. If you like what you see, click schedule a showing, and one of our agents will give you a personal private tour of this gorgeous home.

I'm Tom.

I'm Jay.

Jay Day and the Day Home Team of Real Estate Teams with a weekly real estate podcast. Thank you so much for listening and tell your friends all about it.