Last week I shared data showing that nearly two-thirds of the homes sold in the St Louis 5-County core market (St Louis city and the counties of St Louis, St Charles, Jefferson and Franklin) during the past 12 months sold for the asking price or above. Today, I wanted to focus on just the luxury home market to see how that compared with the overall market. I included homes that sold for $750,000 or higher in this analysis.
As the infographic below shows (exclusively available from MORE, REALTORS®) there were 1,120 luxury homes sold (about 3% of all homes sold) during the past 12-months in the St Louis 5-County core market with 38% of them selling at the list price or above. Drilling down further, we see that 22% of the St Louis Luxury homes sold for greater than the list price.
The St Louis luxury home market (homes priced at $700,000 or above) after remaining relatively flat for about a year has been steadily trending upward for now 10-months in a row. Even though April is not over, there have already been more sales of Luxury homes closed than for the month before, so April will make the 10th month of increased sales activity.
As the STL Market Chart below shows (available exclusively from MORE, REALTORS®), sales of luxury homes in St Louis City and County and St Charles County, have increased from 694 sales for the 12-month period ended April 2018 to 1,130 for the 12-month period ending the 30th of this month (so it’s going to rise further even), an increase of 63% in the past 3 years. For the sake of this analysis, a “luxury” home was considered to be a home selling for $700,000 or above, which puts it in the upper 5% or so of the market.
One of the many benefits to living in St Louis is it’s a very affordable place to live and much easier to be a homeowner than in most other major metro areas. Having said that, we do have areas, such as Ladue, Huntleigh, and Clayton to name a few where we do see home prices that are out of reach for most of the folks living here. One such example is a magnificent 10,000+ square foot Ladue manse that sold earlier this month. At a final sales price of $6,150,000, it is the highest-priced home sale in the REALTOR® MLS in more than 2 years.
See what $6 million gets you in a St Louis home by clicking here – be sure to click on the video to see the tour of this beautiful home.
St Louis may be the 8th most affordable metro area in the country to buy a home, but it also has areas where home prices are much higher as well. The median price of homes sold in the St Louis metro area during the past 12-months is $184,500 however the average price of homes sold within the past 12-months has exceeded this in 85 of the 205 municipalities within the St Louis MSA.
Below is our list of the 30 cities with the highest average price of homes sold during the past 12 months. St Louis County has the majority of the most expensive cities at 22 (although, in all fairness, St Louis County is also chopped up into a ridiculous number municipalities) followed by 7 in St Charles County and 1 in Warren County.
My business partner was out yesterday previewing homes in West St Louis County and had a discussion with a listing agent in the area that mentioned the large supply homes for sale in the upper price ranges. Considering about all we hear about today is how there is a shortage of inventory and homes are selling so fast, this conversation about growing inventory seemed out of sorts. Before I go further, I should mention that the “mainstream” market is almost always going to perform better than the luxury market for a variety of reasons including the size of the buyer pool for that market.
To see how the luxury home market in West St Louis County is performing, I pulled stats for 3 west county locations: Wildwood, Chesterfield and Town & Country, and then for Clayton as a comparison. As the tables below illustrate, with the exception of Chesterfield which has just a 6-month supply of homes for sale, the other 3 areas are clearly buyers’ markets. Clayton has an 18-month supply, Town & Country 20, and Wildwood has a 22-month supply of homes for sale in the $800,000+ price range.
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Chesterfield Luxury ($800k+) Current Listing Data
(click table for complete, live data)
Town & Country Luxury ($800k+) Current Listing Data
(click table for complete, live data)
Clayton Luxury ($800k+) Current Listing Data
(click table for complete, live data)
Wildwood Luxury ($800k+) Current Listing Data
(click table for complete, live data)
As the chart below illustrates, change in the price per foot that homes in this price range have sold for over the past 5-years varies fairly significantly between the areas we are looking at. Luxury home prices have increased the most in Chesterfield with prices rising from $200 per foot in 2013 to $232 per foot thus far in 2018, an increase of 16% in that 5-year period. The Clayton market has fared well too with home prices increasing 12% during the period from $280/foot to $314/foot. Town & Country saw just a modest 1.8% increase during the period and Wildwood actually lost ground with the median price per foot dropping about 1 percent from $175/foot in 2013 to $173/foot thus far in 2018.
Luxury Home Sold Price Per Foot – Past 5-Years
(click chart for complete, live data)
When it comes to how long it takes to sell a luxury home, Clayton has consistently performed the best and continues to improve. In 2013, the median time to sell a luxury home in Clayton was 72 days, thus far this year it’s been just 43 days, a 40% improvement. Town and Country saw a 27 percent improvement in the time to sell, while Chesterfield saw a 23% increase in the time to sell and Wildwood a whopping increase of over 200% in the time to sell a luxury home.
The low inventory of homes for sale in St Louis comes up today in most conversations related to the St Louis real estate market. St Louis home buyers have struggled to get to new listings quick enough, and then make strong enough offers, to successfully beat out the competition. Well, while that may be the story for the majority of the St Louis real estate market, that is not the story for the $1Million+ market.
As the table below shows, there are currently 287 homes listed in St Louis County and St Charles County at a price of $1 million dollars or more which, based upon current sales rates, translates into more than a years supply.
St Charles County and St Louis County $1 Million+ Homes For Sale
(click on table for up to date chart and table)
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From the outset I need to admit that this is probably a pointless article as the mindset of someone that would want to buy a luxury home ($750,000+) in St Louis County is quite different than someone that would want to buy one in the city of St Louis, and vice versa, so neither will probably be swayed in their preference by which location offers a better return on their investment. Having said that, I still thought it would be interesting to examine the market and see how luxury home buyers have fared over the years in both locations.
St Louis County Luxury Home Buyers Fared Much Better Over Past 10 Years Than St Louis City Buyers
As our 10-year chart below shows, luxury home prices (homes that sold for $750,000 or above) have done much better in St Louis County, with the median price per foot represented on the chart below by the yellow line, than they have done in the City of St Louis (brown line). The median price per square foot (the most accurate way to compare home prices) for luxury homes sold in St Louis County during 2007 was $230 and in 2017 luxury homes have sold in St Louis County thus far at $244 per square foot, an increase of 6.1% from 10 years ago. For the city of St Louis, luxury homes sold for a median price of $185 per square foot in 2007 and for 2017 have sold for a median price of $152 per square foot, a decline of 21.7% from 10 years ago. As the chart illustrates so dramatically, St Louis county luxury home prices were not impacted by the market crash of 2008 nearly as much as in the city of St Louis.
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The top four markets in the country for $1 Million+ home sales are all, not surprisingly, located in the state of California, according to a recently released luxury home sales report by Redfin. With 474 $1 million+ home sales, San Francisco was #1 on the list, followed by 469 home sales in Los Angeles, 430 in Silicon Valley and 415 in San Diego, all during the 14 month period ended March 31, 2013.
The St Louis Luxury Home market has communities that would have made the list, however Redfin does not cover the St Louis market. As you can see below, during the same period, the St Louis luxury home market had 5 cities with more than a dozen $1 Million+ home sales. Continue reading “St Louis’ Top Luxury Home Markets“
The top four markets in the country for $1 Million+ home sales are all, not surprisingly, located in the state of California, according to a recently released luxury home sales report by Redfin. With 474 $1 million+ home sales, San Francisco was #1 on the list, followed by 469 home sales in Los Angeles, 430 in Silicon Valley and 415 in San Diego, all during the 14 month period ended March 31, 2013.