St Louis Home Sales Rise Slightly In February But At Slower Rate Than Last Year

By Dennis Norman, on March 25th, 2016

St Louis Home Sales in February rose to 1,973 sales for the 5-county core St Louis market, an increase of 4.9 percent from January’s 1,880 sales. February home sales (closings) in St Louis, while increasing 3 percent from a year ago, did not increase from January’s sales at the same rate as last year. From January 2015 to February 2015, in St Louis, we saw an increase in home sale closings of over 23 percent which, coming out of the historically slowest closing month of the year (January) and headed to the biggest selling market of the year (spring), we would expect. This year, however, we saw just a 4.9 percent increase in sales (closings) from January to February.

Don’t panic yet, it is still a strong real estate market in St Louis..

Even though this sales data could possibly indicate a cooling in the market and perhaps slower times ahead, I think when we look at the big picture, including other vital data such as inventory of homes for sale, supply, time on market, etc, it shows the reduced increase in home sale rate is probably more of a factor of limited supply than of lack of demand.

Pending home sales show increased rate…

All of the data I’ve talked about thus far is based upon closed home sales, so what has already taken place, so to speak, but for a look ahead we can looking at pending home sales, meaning homes with a contract on them from a buyer but still in the process and not yet closed, so, assuming everything goes as planned, a future closing that will reflect in home sales numbers. Beneath the home sale chart below is a chart showing year to date pending home sales (through the end of February) for this year, for the 5-county core St Louis market, as well as for the prior 4 years. The chart shows that year to date St Louis pending home are up about 12 percent from the same time last year which should help get the March home sales numbers up.

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