Now That the Summer Months Are Behind Us, How’s the Market Shaping Up for Fall?

It has been a wild ride so far in 2021 — and the ride may be slowing, but it is definitely not over.

Below is a chart with some key statistics that I garnered from our MLS, REcolorado.com, for the 13 months ending August 2021, a timespan that allows us to compare this August with last August as well as the months since.

In creating the chart, I limited myself to listings within 15 miles of downtown Denver. That includes the entire metro area except for the city of Boulder.

The headings are pretty self-explanatory except for the last three columns. “Ratio” is the ratio of closed price to listing price at the time of sale, which might, in the case of older listings, be less than the original listing price. “Med. DOM” stands for median days that the listing was “active” on the MLS.  Half the listings went under contract in that number of days or less, and half of them went under contract in that number of days or more. “Ave. DOM” stands for average days that listings were active on the MLS, and it’s always higher than median days on the MLS because many listings are overpriced and linger on the market before the price is lowered and the home goes under contract.

There are some numbers that are worth noting, but there are some numbers that are downright remarkable.  We all know, for example, that the inventory of active listings is very low, but it’s notable that it is more than 40% lower this August than it was in August 2020. The number of sold listings is also lower by over 4% and the number of new listings is lower by 13%.

However, it’s also notable that the number of listings that expired without selling has plunged by over 43% from a year ago. More hard-to-sell and overpriced homes are selling before expiring.

Lastly, it is notable that the median days before a listing goes under contract has barely risen, and that figure has been under 7 days now for over a year.

Those statistics are notable, but there are two statistics that are remarkable. The first one is the ratio of sold price to listing price, which remains above 100% at 101.4%, although down from June’s high of 104.6%. This is remarkable because it was only this February that the number rose above 100% for the first time, signaling the height of the bidding wars. The August figure indicates that many bidding wars are still happening — due in part, of course, to the limited inventory of active listings — but they are not as numerous or extreme overall.

I emphasize “overall” because bidding wars are still getting extreme in isolated instances where the home is outstanding in some way or is in a highly desirable area with little or no competing listings. We are still seeing some homes sell for 40 to even 50% over their asking prices here and there. That includes in my home town of Golden.

So what, you may be asking, is the outlook for the fall and winter months?

If there is any seasonality left in the real estate business, it is that there are fewer new listings in the winter. You can see that was true last winter, with the low point being December. This makes sense, because few people want to put their home on the market during the holidays. That, however, only serves to keep the inventory of active listings even lower than during the summer time, yet the buying of homes continues year-round, with roughly as many closings happening in December as in November. Notice, in fact, that December was the only month in the last 13 where the number of sold listings exceeded both the number of active listings and new listings.

We should stop thinking of spring and summer as the selling season, but rather as the listing season. Most sellers believe it’s the selling season, when in fact homes sell year round. In fact, winter could be the best time to put your home on the market because there are just as many buyers getting those MLS alerts that I wrote about last week, but there are fewer homes for them to look at. 

If you want to sell your home before next spring, you should not wait until next spring to put it on the market — but do take some nice exterior photos of your home now that can be used in the marketing of your home over the winter.

Mortgage rates could start to ease upward in the coming months, but that will only increase the market frenzy as buyers try to get ahead of further increases in interest rates. No one in the industry, however, is projecting a major increase in interest rates over the next 12 months.