In the last week, I’ve seen several reports indicating declining home sales on both a nationwide basis as well as for the St Louis market. The reports vary widely but one local report indicated single family home sales were down 6 percent from a year ago, which, of course, should cause some concern for both agents as well as consumers since a 6 percent decline is significant. However, this is why, for this very reason, MORE, REALTORS® developed their own proprietary software to analyze and report the market data (the same MLS data as the aforementioned report was based upon) and present it in a manner that more accurately depicts the market conditions and is more applicable than many of the other reports out there.
Before I go further, I’m not picking on anyone reporting market information, as most are simply reporting the data that is available to them and doing so in a common manner which is to look at data for one specific month (in this case November) and compare it to the same month a year ago. I’m just suggesting that due to fluctuations that can be caused by, for example, weather during the month, the number of Friday’s during the month (a popular day for closings), etc. looking at a single month doesn’t paint a true picture of the market. It also matters what area the data is for, is it the St Louis MSA (which includes 8 counties in Illninois) or the city of St Louis, or some other combination?
As you will see from our STL Market Report™ tables I’ve prepared below, the St Louis real estate market is actually holding fairly steady in terms of sales when we look at the past 12-month period and compare it with the prior 12-month period. In terms of home prices, St Louis home prices have increased about 4% – 5% in the St Louis area, depending on how we look at the area.
Continue reading “St Louis Home Sales Remain Steady But Trending Downward“