As all of us continue to deal with a much different lifestyle as a result of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) I am closely monitoring the St Louis real estate market to help get the most accurate information possible to our agents, clients, and consumers to help them make informed decisions about their real estate transactions.
With this in mind, I took a look at new contracts on listings for the past 7 days, so in other words, homes that actually went under contract during the period, but this time, I wanted to drill down deeper than I did a few days ago when I reported new contract activity. This time I looked at just new sales of residential listings (homes, condos, villas, etc) rather than all property types in the MLS as other property types, such as commercial, land, and farms, for example, could be reacting differently.
As the table below shows, there were 1,142 new contracts on residential listings in the St Louis MSA during the past 7 days, a decline of just 14% from the same time period a year ago. There were 836 new contracts on residential listings in the St Louis 5-County Core market during the same period, a decline of only 13% from the same period a year ago.
St Louis New Contracts On Residential Listings For The Past 7 Days
A slower pace and different methods of selling homes…
As the data shows, COVID-19 is definitely having an effect on the St Louis real estate market in terms of a lower number of sales and, depending on how things go with containing the virus may bring sales down lower, but for now, the sales activity has been only modestly impacted. Granted, with the threat of COVID-19 many changes are being implemented into the process but thus far everyone in the industry is working together well to take the necessary precautions to address the health concerns while still allowing people to conduct business. For example, as much as can be done virtually or electronically is being done.
This is something our firm, MORE, REALTORS, has incorporated into our business model for well over a decadeso for us and our agents, its a familiar and comfortable way for us to do business. It has caused us to switch into high gear to complete enhancements to our DOHR™ (Digital Open House Registration, U.S. Patent Pending) which include a totally virtual open house experience, a virtual showing experience as well as a hosted virtual tour experience. These are all things that will allow us to serve our seller clients by exposing their homes to the market, showing them to potential buyers while also protecting them and their families from exposure to the COVID-19 threat.
Home sales in St Louis have trended upward over the past 3 years with 25,450 homes sold during 2017 (non-distressed sales only), 25,804 during 2018 and 25,962 homes during 2019. As the chart below shows, the days on market (time to sell a home) was 19 days in 2017, declined to 17 days in 2018 and then jumped sharply to 32 days during 2019. The bottom chart shows data for the past 12-months and, as it reveals, the time to sell a home has continued to upward during 2020 thus far with the time in January rising to 47 days.
Home sales in St Louis through the end of April this year, are lower than they have been at the same time of year since 2015. As our exclusive year-to-date sales chart for the St Louis 5-County Core Market below shows, there have been 7,101 homes sold YTD this year (through 4/30) which is down 5.7% from the same time last year when there were 7,529 homes sold. The last time year-to-date home sales were lower at this time of year than now was back in 2015 when there were just 6,727 homes sold.
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.
The median price of homes sold in St Louis City and County combined during the 12 month period ended October 31, 2018 was $185,000 according to the STL Market Report™ from MORE™, REALTORS®. As the STL Market Report™ below shows, this is an increase in the median price of condos sold of 5.11% from the prior 12-month period. During the most recent 12-month period, there were 16,841 homes sold in St Louis City and County combined, just 6 sales more than the prior 12-month period. There is currently a 2.67 month supply of condos for sale in St Louis City and County combined and listings have been on the market a median time of 64 days.
STL Market Report – Homes – St Louis City and County Combined
The St Louis real estate market continues to be a strong one and continues to favor sellers in many cases. As the chart below illustrates, the median price per foot that homes sold for in May (green line) shot up in May to $133 from $129 the month before, a 3.1% increase from the month before and an increase of 6.4% from May 2017 when the price per foot was $125. This increase in home prices didn’t seem to affect St Louis home sales, however, as there were 2,922 homes sold in May, an increase of 24.3% from the month before and an increase of 3.9% from May 2017 when there were 2,811 St Louis homes sold. The time it took for a home to sell in St Louis hit a new low in May at 11 days, the lowest median time to sell that we’ve seen ever!
The real estate market in St Louis, after the first two months, continues to see good price appreciation with home sales on about the same pace as this time last year. Find out more, as well as get information on some of St Louis’s best resources for home buyers and sellers in our just-released market update video. In our MORE, REALTORS, 5 Minute“> St Louis Real Estate Market Update video below, you can quickly and easily get the latest information on home prices, home sales, trends and more for the entire St Louis area!
Sell Your Home For The Highest Price In The Least Amount of Time! See how- STLSellersAdvantage.com Save Commission On Your Home Sale Without Sacrificing Service! See how– FairCommissionRate.com
Thinking of selling and want to know if your neighborhood is a seller’s market? Contact us and we’ll answer that question for you.
You can now subscribe to our ITUNES Podcast Channel to receive our updated market videos via podcast automatically each week! Just click here, then click on “Subscribe Free”.)
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Home sales in the city and county of St Louis this year have pretty consistently, from month to month, been at a pace roughly 5 percent higher than at the same time last year. As our chart below illustrates, we began this year with 747 homes sold (not including distressed sales) in St Louis city and county, an increase of 5.2% from January 2016 when there were 710 homes sold. As of the end of October, there were 12,824 homes sold this year, an increase of 5.6% from the same time last year when there were 12,145 in the city and county of St Louis.
Home Prices Rise Modestly In St Louis City & County…
As the chart and tables, below show, the price per foot that homes sold for (the most accurate way to compare prices) this year has with the exception of May, been higher than for the same period last year. For the past couple of months, the price per foot has been either side of 3% higher than the corresponding period last year. As the YTD table for 2017 shows, the actual median price of homes sold this year, in the city and county of St Louis, has been $194,900, an increase of about 1% from last year’s median price of $192,900 for the same period.
Plenty of Homes For Sale in St Louis City and County…
Referring to the tables below again, you can see that, as of today, there is a 6.57 month supply of homes for sale (non-distressed) in St Louis city and county, putting the market into buyers market territory somewhat, and an increase of a little over 7 percent from the same time last year when there was a 6.13 month supply of homes for sale.
Why You SHOULD Be A Data Nerd, or at least, Pick One For An Agent!
Ok, I’ll admit it…I’m a data nerd! I love analyzing the real estate market and trends. I could sit for hours studying the market, computing prices, and spotting trends. I also love teaching our agents to do the same as well as sharing the results I glean from the data with our agents, to help them stay informed, on top of the market and able to better serve their clients. I also love educating consumers about the real estate market to equip them to make smart decisions when buying or selling real estate, or when choosing an agent.
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Why is this so important?GIGO! That’s why!
What in the world is GIGO? A computer science term which means, to quote Wikipedia: “(GIGO) is where flawed, or nonsense input data produces nonsense output or “garbage…..The principle also applies more generally to all analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their premises are flawed.”
So, in a nutshell, if you, or your real estate agent is getting “flawed” or “nonsense” data, then the output, or result, will be “garbage”. Considering that, for most normal folks, buying or selling a home is often the largest transaction they make, it’s worth avoiding making decisions about that transaction based on bad info.
This is why we work so hard at delivering the best St Louis area home sales, and prices data. I’ll now give you a couple of quick examples of how abundant bad data is out there and how it may differ from what I have here.
From a very popular national real estate search site: “The median home value in Saint Louis is $131,300. Saint Louis home values have gone up 18.3% over the past year“
From a website that gives “neighborhood information”, the median home price in St Louis is currently $136,192.
From a trade association in the real estate industry…”While the median sales price (in the city and county of St Louis) increased 7 percent from $160,000 in October 2016 to $171,000 this year”
Get the idea? Even what appears to be, or may, in fact, be, very credible sources of home price and market data for St Louis, can be very wrong. None of this is intentional, but, instead, a result of there being “too much” information available today and, without going through some effort to sort through it, it can easily be GIGO data.
How does the GIGOdata happen?
Much of the home price data you see quotee for St Louis is for the St Louis MSA, which includes 17 counties, 9 in Missouri and 8 in Illinois.
We clearly identify what data we are reporting, such as, in this article, data for the City and County of St Louis.
Most of the data sources are probably reporting data which includes distressed home sales (foreclosures, short sales, etc) which can, in some areas where there are a lot of them, such as the city of St Louis, dramatically affect home prices.
We often filter out distressed sales, particularly when reporting data for an area where they can impact the data significantly (like in the city and county of St Louis) and then clearly identify what the data represents..
“Home prices” is generally the term used, but often times, the data reported actually combines condo prices with home prices. Condo’s sell for different prices, and appreciate and different rates, than homes, so this can skew the data as well. If we report “home prices” we have filtered out condo sales.
In addition to all of the above, there are many other reasons why it is hard to find accurate and timely home price and sales information for the St Louis area. The large number of municipalities St Louis county is chopped up into is part of it, as is the fact that the city of St Louis is not within St Louis County and that the REALTOR MLS here requires subdivision names to be entered manually, giving rise to errors and difficulty in getting good subdivision level home price and sales data.
This is why at our firm, MORE, REALTORS, we have worked so hard and spent so much time and money developing our own proprietary softwareto assure our agents, and their clients, have access to, the most accurate and timely, St Louis area home price and sales data possible.
St Louis City/County YTD Home Sales & Price Per Foot – (chart)
St Louis continues to enjoy a pretty robust real estate market, albeit it a challenging one for buyers due to the low inventory of homes for sale in most areas, with St Louis home sales, during the past 12 months, up over 5 percent from the prior 12-month period and St Louis home prices up over 5 percent for the same period as well. As the table below shows, in the 5-county core St Louis market, there were 27,437 homes sold in the 12-month period ending May 31, 2017, an increase of 5.13% from the prior 12-month period when there were 26,099 homes sold.
Year-over-year for the month of May looks good as well…
As I frequently comment, looking at home prices and sales activity for a 12-month period is the best way to get a realistic view of the market, less affected by timing of sales due to weather, day of the week the last day of the month falls on etc, it’s still worth looking at the most recent month and comparing it to the prior month, as well as prior year, to help spot trends or changes in the trend. With this in mind, as the chart below shows, for the St Louis core market there were 3,070 homes sold in May, 2017, an increase of 21.2% from the month before when there were 2,533 homes sold, and an increase of just under 1% from May 2016 when there were 3,042 homes sold. As the chart also reveals, homes sold in St Louis during May, 2017 were sold for a median price of $185,000, an increase of 2.8% from the month before when the median sales price was $180,000 and a slight increase of just one-half of one-percent from May 2016 when the median price St Louis homes sold for was $184,000.
Franklin County has the largest increases in home prices and sales during past 12 months…
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As the chart below shows, there were 2,880 homes sold last month within the 5-county core St Louis market (city of St Louis and counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin) an increase of 6.5% from March 2016 when there were 2,705 homes sold. Looking at a the year over year change for a single month of home sales doesn’t usually tell the complete story, so I like to look at the prior 12 month period and compare it to the prior 122 month period to get the “big picture”. When we do that for the 5-county core St Louis home market, as the table below shows, there were 27,437 homes sold in the 12 month period ending March 31, 2017, an increase of 6.26% from the prior 12 month period when there were 25,821 homes sold.
St Louis Home Prices Increased 6.5% in March from year ago
The chart below also reveals that the median price of homes sold last month in the St Louis core market was $166,380, an increase of 6.5% from March 2016 when the median price was $156,250. Looking at the table for the most recent 12 months we see the median price of homes sold was $180,000 ,an increase of 5.26% from the prior 12 month period when the median price of homes sold was $171,000.
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Yesterday, the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) released their existing home sales data for October 2016 which revealed home sales in the U.S. during that month were at a, seasonally-adjusted, annual, rate of 5.6 million homes, an increase in rate of 2 percent from the month before. We track St Louis home sales data in a little different manner, comparing the most recent 12 month period with the prior 12 month period, so a rolling 12 month average of sorts. Using this method, as the table below shows, home sales in the St Louis MSA for the 12-month period ending October 31, 2016, increased 6.0% from the prior 12 month period and we have branded the St Louis MSA housing market as a “Hot Seller’s Market“.
There were 36,139 homes sold in the St Louis MSA in the 12 month period ending last month, up from 34,089 homes sold during the prior 12 month period. During the most recent 12-month period, homes in St Louis sold for a median price of $167,837, an increase of 6.64% from the prior 12-month period when homes in the St Louis MSA sold for a median price of $157,388.
If we look at home sales for just the month of October, using the chart beneath the table below, we see that there were 2,925 homes sold in the St Louis MSA during the month, an increase of 8 percent from October 2015 when there were 2,711 homes sold. The median price of homes sold last month was $165,000, a 7 percent increase from October 2015 when the median price of homes sold in the St Louis MSA was $154,000.
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St Louis Home Sales rose to 2,209 homes sold during September (in the 5-county core market) from 1,992 homes sold in September 2014, an increase of 10.9 percent! September home sales declined 7.3% from the month before which is to be expected due to the seasonality of the market.
St Louis homes prices rose 10.6% from year ago…
Homes sold in the St Louis 5-County core market in September, sold for a median price of $177,000, a 10.6% increase from September 2014 when the median price was $160,000.
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St Louis Home sales, for the 5-county core market, in June totaled 3,542 sales, an increase of 15.4 percent from June 2014 when there were 3,068 homes sold. The St Louis core market consists of the city of St Louis and the counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin. While all of the 5 counties included in the core saw an increase in home sales from a year ago, the results, as the charts and individual results below show, varied widely by county.
St Louis home prices rose 4.2 percent in June 2015 from the year before, for the 5-county core market. As the charts below by county show, each county, except St Louis County where prices remained flat, saw and increase in home prices.
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Further proof of just how “local” real estate is and how important it is for home buyers and sellers to have accurate, targeted, local data is the fact that today the St Louis Business Journal reported “home sales increased 17.9 percent year to date in the St. Louis metropolitan area, more than twice the national rate of 8.4 percent”. While I’m not saying their reporting is inaccurate, as they were quoting data from the St Louis Federal Reserve, the problem is the data is based upon sales for the whole St Louis MSA which is comprised of 17 counties with 8 of them in Illinois as well as the fact the data does not come from what is probably the best and most accurate source of data, the REALTOR MLS.
However, many home buyers and sellers just see or hear the headlines from the media which could negatively impact you if you think the market you are buying or selling in is in fact stronger or weaker than you think. For example, based upon the headline, if you were looking to buy a home in the City of St Louis you would probably find some comfort knowing you are buying somewhere where the housing market is so hot home sales have increased more than double the national average year to date from last year. The reality is though, while home sales in the city of St Louis are doing better so far this year than last year, as the table below shows, this year there have been 1,385 homes sold, an increase of 7.7% from last year when there were 1,286 homes sold during the same period. Don’t get me wrong, an increase of 7.7% is good however, it is actually below the national average of 8.4% and certainly not double the national averageas the headlines and MSA data may make you think.
So what’s the answer? Call me and I’ll make sure you get the accurate information you need for your particular situation and can also connect you with one of our professional, hand-picked agents that can help you put the data and information to work in your best interest whether buying or selling. Seriously, don’t you think you deserve this for what may be the biggest financial transaction you make? Call or text me at 314.332.1012 or email me at Dennis@STLRE.com.
Oh yeah, and check out all the tables below for accurate sales data for the REAL St Louis market as well as the individual counties.
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St Louis home sales, in the 5-county “core” St Louis market, increased 16.9 percent in March from the year before, with 2,589 homes sold in March 2015 up from 2,214 sold in March 2014. As the chart below shows, there was the normal “seasonal” dip during the winter months, but the St Louis real estate market has come out of winter strong!
St Louis home prices on the rise too!
As the chart below also illustrates, the median price of homes sold in St Louis has increased from a year ago as well. The median price of homes sold in March 2015 was $150,000, an increase of 12.3% from March 2014 when the median price was $133,551.
Charts and data are below for the individual counties as well.
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St Louis home sales slipped in November to 1722 home sales for the 5-county core St Louis market (the city of St Louis and the counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin) from 1808 home sales in November 2013, according to the latest data available from MORE, REALTORS. Home prices in St Louis went the opposite direction during the same period however, rising from a median price of $147,500 for homes sold in November 2013 to a median price of $156,000 for homes sold in November 2014, an increase of 5.8% for the year.
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St Louis home sales rose in March to 2,729 homes sold in the five-county St Louis core area (city of St Louis and counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin) which is an increase of 11.3 percent from March 2012 when there were 2,451 homes sold. St Louis home prices rose 3.7 percent in March to an average sales price of $146,146 from $140,904 a year ago.
On a national level, the Pending Home Sales Index from the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) was at 105.7 for March, an increase of 1.5 percent from February and and increase of 7.0 percent from a year ago.
The St. Louis housing market is showing some signs of strength with St Louis home sales increasing in July to a seasonally adjusted rate of 21,038 homes, an increase of 6.8 percent from June’s seasonally adjusted rate of 19,691 homes. This increase for the month is very close to the increase in home sales in the U.S. according to the report released today from the National Association of REALTORS(R), existing home sales in July rose 7.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.24 million units up from a level of 4.89 million units in June.
