As the list below shows, seven of the ten school districts in the St Louis MSA where homes are selling the fastest, are in outer-ring counties, with the remaining three districts being in St Louis County. This list is based upon the average time it took homes to sell that closed in the past 30 days and Wright City R-II District came in at the top of the list with an average of 14 days for homes to sell. St Charles County was home to the largest number of the fastest-selling school districts with 4 followed by St Louis County with 3, Warren County with 2, and 1 in Jefferson County.
Ten Fastest-Selling School Districts In The St Louis MSA
(click on the list for a complete and current list)
The St Louis real estate market has started off 2021 strong, but is a change coming? Closings of home sales in January were strong with more sales closing than in January of last year, but with everything going and the uncertainty of the economy will it continue? I address both the current state of the St Louis real estate market, as well as discuss our “leading indicator” data which gives us a glimpse of where the market is headed in the St Louis Real Estate Market Update video you can access below.
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I would say for pretty much most of the 40-years I’ve been in the real estate business in St Louis, one-story homes have been popular. The trend shifted with new homes however as undeveloped ground became more scarce and demand for larger homes grew, which led to two-story homes gaining in popularity. There are of course other styles, such as 1.5 story homes, 2.5 or 3 story homes, and multi-level homes, but one and two-story are the most plentiful.
One-story homes outsell 2-story homes by nearly 3-1:
As the tables below show, in the St Louis MSA during the past months, there have been 11,898 1-story homes sold, 2.7 times as many 2-story homes sold during the same period. With 4,380 2-story homes sold this was nearly double the next most popular style, 1.5 story homes of which 2,370 sold.
One-story homes sold the fastest:
The popular 1-story home also sold faster than other styles, taking a median time of just 27 days to sell while 1.5 story homes took 38 days and 2-story homes 32 days.
Two-story homes that sold were the youngest:
The one-story homes that sold were a median age of 54 years, while the median age of the two-story homes was just 31 years.
The St Louis real estate market has slowed a little in February thus far. As the Local Market Trends reports (availably exclusively from MORE, REALTORS® ) show, new contracts written on listings as well as new listings in St Louis 5-County Core market, were down in each of the first two weeks of February both from the prior week as well as from the same period a year ago.
New contracts written (new sales):
As the reports below show, there were 590 new contracts written (new sales) on homes during the 2nd week of February which was 13% fewer contracts than were written the same week a year ago and 7% fewer than the prior week.
New listings:
As the reports below illustrate, there were 537 new listings of homes during the 2nd week of February which was 9% fewer new listings than during the same period a year ago and 8% fewer new listings than the prior week.
Local Market Trends – New contracts written on homes
President Joe Biden on Tuesday extended the ban on home foreclosures for federally backed mortgages until June 30, 2021. This is the second extension of the ban which was originally set to expire January 31, 2021, but then previously extended by President Biden to March 31, 2021.
Meanwhile, as the chart below shows, serious delinquencies on home mortgages have been on the rise since nearly the beginning of the pandemic almost a year ago. The ban on foreclosures is certainly a welcome relief to those struggling to make their house payments. However, with such a high delinquency rate one has to wonder if it is just delaying the inevitable and that this is sort of a ticking time bomb for the real estate market? I say that because with the number of mortgage delinquencies piling up it is safe to assume that once the ban is over there will be a massive amount of foreclosures hitting the market which may very well have a negative impact on the market.
It’s no secret that listings of homes for sale in St Louis are in short supply and for a while now new sales have outpaced new listings making it a challenge for home buyers. However, over the past couple of months, new sales of homes in St Louis County have outpaced new listings by a greater margin than neighboring counties. As can be compiled from the tables below, new sales of homes in the St Louis 5-County Core market during the last four months outpaced new listings during the same period by 12.7%. For St Louis county, there were 6,095 new contracts written during the last 4 months and 5,353 new listings resulting in new contracts outpacing new listings by 13.9%, a rate 1.2% higher than the rate for the 5-county area as a whole. Franklin County had the next highest rate at 10.7%, then Jefferson County at 9.4%, St Charles County at 5.8%, and then the city of St Louis was the only county where new contracts were about equal to new listings.
The homeownership rate in the St Louis MSA for the fourth quarter of 2020 was 69.3%, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This is a slight increase from the 4th quarter of the prior year when the homeownership rate in the St Louis MSA was 68.3%. This puts St Louis 23rd on the list of the 75 largest MSA’s in the country in terms of homeownership, down from 17th on the list during the prior quarter.
The residential real estate market in counties in the Missouri portion of the St Louis metropolitan area appear to be outperforming the St Louis MSA counties in Illinois, according to the latest New Contracts Report below, exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®. As the report shows, for the most recent week reported, new contracts written on residential listings were up 14% for the St Louis MSA as a whole from the same week a year ago, but most of the increase in sales was in the Missouri portion of the MSA. Overall, in the St Louis MSA, there were 105 more new sales in the most recent week vs the same time a year ago and 97 of the increased sales were in counties located in Missouri with the remaining 8 being from counties located in Illinois.
St Louis MSA Counties – New Contracts on Home Listings
For home buyers that have been in the market lately this won’t come as a surprise, but the inventory of homes for sale continues to remain low in St Louis. In fact, in 43 zip code areas in St Louis, there is a 1 month supply or less of homes for sale. As the table below shows, the 10 zip-codes in the St Louis core market with the lowest inventory have about 1/3 of a month’s supply or less. Historically, a 4-6 month supply of homes for sale would be considered “normal”.
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St Louis 5-County Core Market Supply Of Active Listings By Zip Code
(click on the table for the complete, current list)
It probably won’t come as a surprise that many of St Louis’ best school districts also have some of St Louis’ most expensive home prices. As the list below shows, the Ladue School district has the highest-priced homes with the average price for homes sold in the past 12 months at nearly $900,000. Of the top 10 highest priced school districts, 8 are in St Louis County, one in St Charles County and one in Franklin County.
St Louis 5-County Core’s Most Expensive School Districts
One of the benefits to living in St Louis we often hear about is how affordable it is compared with many other metro areas around the country. Granted, one of the things that contribute to the “affordability” is the price of homes but that doesn’t mean we don’t have areas with pricey real estate here. The list below is part of the list showing what the average price homes sold for in every municipality in the St Louis MSA during the past 12 months and reveals the five municipalities where the average home price exceeded $1 Million.
Leading the list is the relatively small, but expensive, Country Life Acres where homes in the past 12 months sold for an average of $1,621.564.
St Louis 5-County CORE Market’s Most Expensive Municipalities
As of this morning, the Hancock Place School District and Bayless School District, both in the South St Louis County area, are tied for the district where homes are selling the fastest. As the Fastest-Selling School Districts in the St Louis MSA list (available exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®) below shows, homes that sold in the past 30 days in those districts took an average of just 17 days to sell. Five of the top 10 districts for fast home sales are located in St Louis County, two are in Jefferson County, one each in St Charles County, Warren County, and Madison District 12 in Illinois.
Most residential real estate data is published based upon closed deals meaning the transaction is already in the past and it’s activity may not be reflective of the current market. This is why at MORE, REALTORS® we developed our leading indicators report that I shared a few days ago and also why we developed a home sale trends chart. The home sales trend chart, such as the one shown below for the St Louis 5-County Core real estate market, is still based upon closed sales however each monthly data point represents the total of the closed sales in the proceeding 12-months making this a very good indicator of the market conditions and where we are in an improving market or a declining one.
As the chart below shows, for the first 12 months or so in the 25-month period reported, the sales trend was pretty steady, making a flat line on the chart. Then, around the end of 2019, the trend started increasing slightly through the spring of 2020 (when the impact of COVID-19 hit the market the hardest) and then fell the next few months. By late summer last year the home sales trend was on the rise and, as you can see, didn’t stop rising through the end of the year.
Will this upward trend continue or will it level off or even decline? Right now it’s hard to say given all the variables that could affect it. We have a changing administration in Washington D.C. which could affect the economy, we have the ongoing pandemic and a few other things that could very well affect the residential real estate market. As I shared in our leading indicators report the other day, the new contract activity is very encouraging so for the short term, I would say the trend will remain around the level it’s at currently.
12-Month Home Sales Trend – St Louis 5-County Core Market
Yesterday, I reported that St Louis area home sales and prices were both up about 8% during 2020 from 2019 so today we’ll take a look at how condominium sales and prices compared during the same period.
As the STL Market Report shows (available exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®), in the 5-County Core St Louis market there were 3,567 condominiums sold during 2020, 10 condominiums less than the 3,577 condominiums sold during 2019. The median price of condos sold in 2020 in this St Louis market was $163,900, an increase of 5.74% from 2019 when the median price was $155,000.
The current price trend, as depicted in the report, is up significantly with the median price per square foot of condos that are currently on the market being over 23% higher than the median price per foot of condominiums sold during 2020. There are currently 417 condos for sale in the St Louis 5-County Core market, representing a 1.30 month supply at the current sales rates.
STL Market Report for the St Louis 5-County Core Market Condos
(Non-distressed condo sales only – click on report for live report)
In spite of the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, stay at home orders, a shaky economy and a fair amount of social unrest, 2020 still managed to be a good year for residential real estate! As the STL Market Report shows (available exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®), in the 5-County Core St Louis market there were 28,131 homes sold during 2020, an increase of 8.27% from 2019 when there were just 25,982 homes sold. The median price of homes sold in 2020 in this St Louis market was $232,000, an increase of 7.93% from 2019 when the median price was $214,950.
The current price trend, as depicted in the report, is up as well with the median price per square foot of homes that are currently on the market being over 9% higher than the median price per foot of homes sold during 2020. There are currently 2,031 active listings on the market representing a 0.81 month supply at the current sales rates.
STL Market Report for the St Louis 5-County Core Market
(Non-distressed home sales only – click on report for live report)
During the final days of December and the first couple of January, there were 393 new contracts written on homes that were for sale, an increase of 20% over the same period a year ago. As the New Contracts Report below shows (availablle exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®) all 5 counties in the 5-County Core St Louis market saw an increase in new contracts written over the same period a year ago. Franklin County saw the largest increase at 50%.
As the STL Market ReportTM below shows, there were 3,419 existing condominiums sold in the 12-month period ended November 30, 2020, a decrease of 0.23% from the prior 12-month period. The median price of condos sold during the past 12-months was $159,900, an increase of 5.2% from the prior 12-month period. To make sure the data represents the market as accurately as possible, distressed home sales and new construction were excluded from the data. As the report shows, the current inventory of condos for sale is just 1.2 months.
STL Market Report – St Louis 5-County Area – Condos
As the STL Market ReportTM below shows, there were 26,675 existing homes sold in the 12-month period ended November 30, 2020, an increase of 7.13% from the prior 12-month period. The median price of homes sold during the past 12-months was $225,580, an increase of 7.42% from the prior 12-month period. To make sure the data represents the market as accurately as possible, distressed home sales and new construction were excluded from the data. The increase in home sales is almost hard to imagine given how low the inventory of homes for sale has been. As the report shows, the current inventory of homes for sale is just 3/4 of one-month.
Yesterday, I wrote an article titled “St Louis Home Sales – No end in sight?” in which one of my caveats had to do with listing inventory, noting the obvious that no matter how many homebuyers are out there, if there is nothing for them to buy, St Louis home sales will fall. As promised, I did an analysis of new listings and inventory using proprietary software we have developed at MORE, REALTORS to enable our agents to fully comprehend the market and be able to use that knowledge to serve their clients.
The first table below is our leading indicator report for new listings that were taken in the St Louis core market during the past week compared with the same week a year ago. As the table shows, listings for this period were up 18% from a year ago, which is good news but, as I reported yesterday, new sales were up 21% so sales rose at a higher rate than listings. The second table compares last week’s new listings with the prior week and, as yesterday’s home sales report showed, there was a decline, in the case of new listings taken they were down 5% from the prior week while yesterday I reported sales were down 10%. The report at the bottom is another proprietary product of MORE, REALTORS and it’s a report showing the current inventory of listings for sale in every zip code in the St Louis MSA of which I showed the 20 zips with the lowest inventory.
The bottom line…
To recap, new sales contracts written on listings in the past week outpaced the number of new listings by about 8% and new sales contracts written on listings in the past two weeks outpaced the number of new listings by nearly 11%. One thing to keep in mind is that a contract written does not equal a sold listing as a percentage of the contracts will fail to close due to building inspections, financing, appraisal issues, or other reasons so the gap is not quite as large as it may appear. The other thing to remember is the time of the year we are in…right before Thanksgiving is not a popular time for sellers to list their homes as many will wait until after Thanksgiving and some will wait until after Christmas. However, in today’s market, buyers don’t have that luxury…they have to be prepared to buy at any time or faced missing out in this tight market. So, for now, I think we’re ok and I think my caveat from yesterday is covered but I’ll be watching the inventory moving forward.
I think just about everyone that is trying to buy or sell a home in St Louis or even thinking about it, is well aware that we have been in a strong real estate market here in St Louis for some time now. The St Louis real estate market has favored sellers for the past several years largely due to a low supply of homes for sale and continuing demand by home buyers. The question I’m often asked though, especially right now with so much going on in our country right now that could impact the economy (COVID-19 and the Presidential election are the two biggies) is “will the strong home sale in St Louis continue?”.
To answer the question, being the Chief Data Nerd at MORE, REALTORS, I naturally turned to the proprietary software we have developed to help our agents answer questions like this for their clients. Based upon the data I’m sharing below, I would say the short answer to the question is that St Louis home sales appear to be poised to continue at a historically strong rate, at least for the near future. Now for the caveats, of which there are two big ones: the first is that this is contingent upon listing inventory as if there is nothing to buy it doesn’t matter how many buyers you have, and the second is absent something dramatic happening to the economy to really rock the boat. For the former question, I’ll address that in the next day or so with an article in which I’ll look at the listing inventory trend for St Louis.
Leading Indicators…
Looking at how many sales closed is helpful to see how the market is doing, but it’s much more advantageous and accurate to look at the current activity in the market, the leading indicators if you will, which are new contracts written on listings. Our exclusive Leading Indicators reports below show that all 5 counties in the St Louis Core market saw an increase in the number of new contracts written in the past week from the same week a year ago, in fact, overall a 21% increase. The second report below shows the same data versus the prior week and it shows an overall decrease of 10% in the number of new contracts from the week before with 3 of the five counties showing a decrease, but given that we are headed toward winter and the holidays this is normal. Finally, the chart at the bottom, another exclusive feature of MORE, REALTORS, which illustrates the prior 12-month home sales for each month in the past 5 years, clearly indicates an upward trend. For the 12-month period ending November 30 (which isn’t even over yet), there have been 28,153 homes sold, an increase of nearly 5% from a year ago.
Given the impact of COVID-19 on the St Louis real estate market, particularly during the late winter/early spring months as well as a low-inventory market already, it should not come as a surprise that St Louis area home sales have trended downward somewhat during the past 12-months. As our STL Market Report below shows, for the 5-county core St Louis real estate market, there were 26,723 homes sold during the 12-month period ended July 31, 2020, a decline of 0.88% from the prior 12-month period when there were 26,960 homes sold. That very modest decline I think is actually very encouraging given what the market has been through with COVID-19.
St Louis 5-County Core Market Home Sales
St Charles County and Jefferson County are the exceptions…
While the overall 5-county market was down, individually, the counties of St Charles and Jefferson have both fared better and, in fact, had modest increases in home sales during this period. As the tables below show, there were 5,878 homes sold in St Charles county during the past 12-months, an increase of 1.08% from the prior 12 months. In Jefferson County, there were 3,406 homes sold during the past 12-months, an increase of 0.53% from the prior 12-months.
During the second quarter of 2020, 32.3% of the homeowners with a mortgage within the 63110 zip-code, were equity-rich on their mortgage, meaning their mortgage balances were less than 50% of the value of their homes, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Research. As the table below shows, the zip codes of 63112 and 63143 were not far behind 63110, with equity-rich percentages of 31.6% and 30.0% respectively.
During the second quarter of 2020, 45.5% of the homeowners with a mortgage within the 63115 zip code, were underwater on their mortgage, meaning they were in a negative-equity position, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Research. As the table below shows, the north county zip codes of 63137 and 63136 were not far behind at 45.1% and 41.3%, respectively. Of the 10 St Louis-area zip codes with the highest rate of underwater homeowners, 7 were in St Louis County and 3 in the City of St Louis.
St Louis Underwater (Negative-Equity) Homeowners By Zip Code – Top 10 Highest
During the second quarter of 2020, 9.8% of the homeowners in St Louis with a mortgage, were underwater on their mortgage, meaning they were in a negative-equity position, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Research. As the table below shows, this is the lowest level of St Louis homeowners that are seriously underwater since 2013 when this data was first tracked. In spite of financial difficulties and hardships that people may be suffering as a result of COVID-19, the downward trend of underwater homeowners in St Louis that began during the 3rd quarter of 2019 continues.
St Louis Underwater (Negative-Equity) Homeowners
(Click on table for live, complete data from 2013-Present)
Yesterday, I shared a report on new sales of listings in the St Louis MSA which showed sales were up 10% for the week from a year ago. Today, I created the report below which shows new listings during the same week, and while the number of new listings was up 8% for the week from a year ago, they still didn’t keep pace with the new sales. As the report reveals, there were 1155 new listings in the St Louis MSA last week and, as yesterday’s report showed, 1245 sales, so nearly 8% more new sales than new listings.
New Residential Listings – St Louis MSA
For the Week Ended June 13, 2020
Data Source: MARIS – Copyright 2020, MORE, REALTORS All Rights Reserved
There were 542 homes “flipped” in the St Louis metro area during the first quarter of 2020, or 8.5% of the total number of homes sold in the St Louis metro area during the quarter, according to data just released by ATTOM Data Solutions. This is an increase of 13.8% from the prior quarter and is a decrease of 2% from a year ago. The median gross profit was 52,900 a 60.8% gross ROI.
Definition of a “flipped” home…
For the purposes of this report, a flipped home is considered to be any home or condo that was sold during the first quarter of this year in an arms-length sale that had previously had an arms-length sale within the prior 12 months. Since homeowners don’t tend to buy a home only to turn around and resell it within a year, when this does occur it is typically the result of an investor buying a property, renovating it, then reselling it.
The St Louis real estate market slowed when the effects of COVID-19 hit the St Louis area in early March but after continuing at a slower pace for a few weeks has quickly shifted gears to a faster pace. The St Louis market has improved to the point that, for the 12-month period ended May 31, 2020, St Louis home sales were down just 1.84% from the prior 12-month period. The median price of homes sold during the past 12-months was $213,000, an increase of 6.55% from the prior period.
St Louis 5-County Core Market Home Sales and Prices
COVID-19 lingers on but the real estate market in St Louis has made a quick recovery from the negative impact it had on the market. The data supports the idea that home buyers are tired of waiting for everything to come back to “normal” (or whatever variation of normal the new normal is) and have been out looking at and buying homes. This is evidenced by the chart below which depicts showings of listings this year and compares each 7-day period with the year before. As you can see, showings this year (the orange line) we down, significantly from last year during the worst of the pandemic, but have rebounded to the point where last week’s showings topped the year before by over 12%!
It’s no wonder home buyers are tripping over themselves and getting into bidding wars to buy a house as the supply of homes for sale is at or near historic lows. As our table below shows, there are currently 40 zip codes in the St Louis MSA with a one-month or less supply of homes for sale (7 of the zips have no homes for sale) and a total of 76 of the 127 (60%) zip codes within the St Louis MSA have a supply of homes for sale of 2 months or less.
This low inventory, along with low-interest rates and pent-up demand from the COVID-19 induced stay at home orders, is creating a real feeding frenzy of sorts for homebuyers in the St Louis market. For sellers, this is a dream come true, plenty of demand and little competition! Granted, this is not true in all areas and all price ranges, but for the most common prices ranges in the more popular areas it is very true.
Sellers should sell now!
If you are someone that has been thinking about selling, I would act on those thoughts now and take advantage of the current low-inventory conditions. While I don’t know that I agree, there are folks out there predicting that the market is going to get flooded with homes for sale shortly turning the tide on sellers. For me, I’ll believe that when I see it, but nonetheless, now is definitely a great time to sell.
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As the St Louis real estate market continues to distance itself from the effects of COVID-19 and the resulting stay at home orders and business shutdowns, I continue to see market activity that is encouraging. For example, as the chart below shows, for the most recent week, reported (through last Thursday) the showing activity on listings in St Louis and surrounding areas were at a level that is 3.9% higher than for the same period last year. This is a huge rebound since showings hit bottom in the middle of the lock-down on April 9th and fell to a level that was barely half of the year before.
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