It is easy to wonder about the state of our local real estate market when we are gathering much of our information each week from national headlines, stories we hear from our neighbors at the grocery store and seeing the multitude of signs go up each month around town. I took some time over the last week to gather some statistics about what we refer to in the business as the "absorption rate" for our market. The absorption rate is the rate at which it would take for our house inventory to sell out. Here are some real numbers that we can talk about.
- There are currently 315 houses listed in Newtown.
- 66 of those homes are currently Under Deposit or Pending.
- 315 minus the 66 equals 249 still available.
- Between January 1 and May 1, 69 homes sold in Newtown
- That is an average of 14 per month.
This is referred to as the "Absorption Rate" or how fast the inventory is drawing down.
- At this current rate of absorption we have approximately 17 months of inventory.
This news good. We have run over 24 months of inventory at times over the last several years so 17 month is not so bad. If the absorption rate continues to get better then moving towards 12 months inventory will be cause for celebration.
These are good statistics to help us understand our market.The good news for me is that closings in January, February and March were 12, 16 and 16.
April jumped up to 23 sold and with 66 homes currently under deposit it appears that the trend is going to continue up. We typically have a spring market surge, so we will have to wait and see if the 66 homes are a spring market surge or a general increase in buyers.
Seller Tip: Make sure you calculate the actual monthly cost of staying in your home including, taxes, insurance, maintenance etc. Sometimes the amount a seller is losing by staying in their home far outweighs a price reduction to get it sold.
