Hello Everyone and thank you for watching. This is Gia with Palm Beach Premier Real Estate here in Boca Raton Florida with your 2-minute local market report for JANUARY 2017.
So here’s a quick take on the numbers that came out from the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches – and why we would disagree with their analysis of what they mean……..
The message from your team here at Palm Beach Premiere Real Estate this month is:
Supply Continues to Climb AND Not all Up Arrows are Good News
So in taking a closer look at the internal numbers…. What we’re seeing is the following:
- FIRST – The SUPPLY of Listings continues to increase with Active Inventory UP another 7.5%
- SECOND – We are now 5.3 months supply of Inventory for SFH’s (UP 10.4%) and 6.2 months for Townhouses & Condos (UP 12.7%) – 6 months supply is generally considered to be a balanced market
- THIRD… Closed sales were DOWN sharply in January compared to December with SFH sales DOWN 18% and Townhouses/Condos DOWN 16%. It is no coincidence that January’s closed sales units represented the lowest monthly number in the last 12 months.
- FOURTH – The numbers here in Palm Beach County continue to indicate a market in transition…Sellers are getting a median of 94.1% of their list price … with homes going under contract in approximately 57 days ..if priced correctly of course….Up nearly 10%
- Median Prices were DOWN in January compared to December – with the median sales price of Townhouses & Condos at it’s lowest since February 2016! It will be Interesting to see if we see a year over year DOWN arrow with next month’s data.
- FINALLY – Rising Interest rates continue to be part of the discussion coming from The Federal Reserve– with an INCREASE in rates likely in either March or June and another later in the year. So keep your eyes on both the employment and inflation data.
So….what we can clearly see from the January data is that several significant factors are taking place here and why we mentioned before that not all UP Arrows are good news:
While the association talks about the positives year-over-year, we are analyzing the data on a month-to-month basis and looking for clear trends and market changes….For Example:
- More Inventory continues to come to market and has done for some time…
- Demand is waning particularly at the upper end of the market
- And third, prices are likely to trend to downwards as we mentioned earlier
So we clearly have some economic fundamentals playing themselves out that further illustrate the transitioning marketplace that we’ve been talking about for several months now.
Specifically – we are watching inventory levels very closely as we have now seen 12 consecutive months where supply has increased versus the same month in the prior year.
So anticipate a continuing transition ahead to a buyers market.