Today's top story: Winter is coming!

Hi everybody, Joe Hillner with Your Home Sold Guaranteed Realty, where we guarantee the sale of your home or I'll buy it!

Here is this week’s Boca Market Watch.

First, Single Family Homes:

This past week, 44 new listings, not terrible, and ranging in price from $249K to a pair of new construction homes next door to each other for $24 ands $25M respectively! 7 homes back on the market, while 51 homes listed took a price decrease and 7 sellers raised their asking price. And another down week, with just 25 different properties under contract, and only 14 going pending! 38 homes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired outright And another dismal week with 33 homes sold, ranging from $480K to $3.9M!

Next up, Condos and Townhomes:

70 new listings, not bad, and ranging from $115 Grand to $10.01 Million - I guess that extra $10,000 is a deal breaker, huh. 11 units came back on the market, 57 properties with a price decrease, that's a bunch, and 6 sellers with an increase. And like last week, another bad week with only 25 different properties under contract, and 32 going pending, 19 condos or townhomes were unsuccessful in selling and were taken off the market or the listing expired. 50 closed sales this week, that's decent, and ranging in price from $145K to $2.7M.

Here's what's making news right now.

I get asked all the time, "How's the market?" And the honest answer is, "It depends on one's perspective. Are you thinking about buying, selling or investing?" Let me share the most recent market stats with you, and then you can decide where we're heading.

The November stats will be released next week, so let's look at October of this year vs last year. We sold an average of 60 homes per week in October 2021, while this year, it was down 35%, to just 38 per week. And this past week, we only sold 33, so we're trending downward and approaching a 50% year over year decline.

Pending sales, which are forward looking, were down 46% in October and down nearly 60% last week! Despite what we were expecting, the # of new listings has also been slipping, not increasing. New listings were actually down 13% in October, and we thought that the higher prices would attract more sellers to the market. That didn't happen. Even so, the total inventory of homes for sale has increased by 54%. Why?

Demand has cooled off and its taking a lot longer to sell a home now. Properties are just sitting there, in many cases. In March, we bottomed out with about a 3 week supply of homes available. In October, it was 3.7 months, and we are now looking at a 4.2 month supply. That's a 560% increase, holy smoke! Assuming that continues, we could tip over into a buyers market soon, rather than a more balanced market, which is what Chairman Powell hoping for.

Prices have been a bright spot, but those days are likely to be over. The average sales price in October was up 18% to almost $1.3 M, which is awesome, but with the days on market climbing rapidly, that is going to change. The median time to contract was up 22% in October, to about 40 days, and it's now around 45 days.

So what does it all mean? If you're a seller, this is a good time to sell because prices are still up and winter is coming, so move fast! If you're a buyer, interest rates came down some and there's a lot more choices available to you and less competition, so take advantage of that situation. And if you're an investor looking for an income stream, you'll get a lot better ROI on real estate than you will by buying bonds. So there you have it. How's the market? It's just great!!!