It’s no secret that the real estate market slows down in the winter and typically nearly screeches to a halt from shortly before Christmas to shortly after New Years. Â Therefore, when tracking showing activity in the St Louis area, the first week of January of each year is used as the base, or “0” value and then each rolling 7-day period afterward is compared to that first week.
As the chart below shows, in 2020 and 2021 all weekly averages of showing activity were above the baseline of January until getting close to Thanksgiving, with the one exception being late March and Early April of 2020 which was a result of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning. Â The orange line depicts this year and it shows showing activity all year has been below the levels of the prior two years for the most part, however, the gap has widened in the past couple of weeks. Â On July 4th, for the prior 7-day period the number of showings was less than the first week of January and it dipped further on July 5th to 6.9% fewer showings during that 7-day period than the first week of January. Â Granted, it is always going to dip around a holiday but last year for the period ended July 5th there were 9.1% more showings than the first week of January, for a difference of 16% from this year.
Rising interest rates and increased inflation are no doubt two of the big reasons for this along with a low inventory of homes for sale.
Listing Showing Activity For the St Louis Metro Area (along with other markets served by MARIS)
(click on chart for live, interactive chart)
