Mike Simonsen, president of Altos Research, digs into the data each week to offer real estate professionals insight on the real-time market.
The median price of single family homes in the U.S. is marching lower each week and is now $415,000. If this year follows the usual seasonal trend, we should have four more weeks of price declines until the second week of January, and land right around $400,000 before prices tick up for the spring. If prices don’t start rising in mid-January, though, that would be a bearish signal for the market. We’ll be watching closely!
Inventory is also continuing to drop as we approach the end of the year. Total available inventory of homes for sale right now in the U.S. is 535,000 single family homes, which is down 2.5% from last week. The decline in inventory is being accelerated by slightly lower mortgage rates. And of course, the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years are always when inventory falls most rapidly.
