I was reading some real estate news about how home sales are down this year as compared with last year. Real estate is local so I ran my own numbers using data from the MLS.
In Ramsey County in the last 55 days home sales were down 22% as compared with the same period last year (2022) and down 39% from the same period in 2021. 2020 and 2021 were not normal years. Home sales were up during those years which years. 2019 was a bit more normal and home sales were 33% higher in Ramsey County than they were during the same period this year.
In fact, I kept going back and home sales are lower than they were in 2011. So far prices are still rising which is very different from what happened during the housing market crash. Also, it is important to understand that the average number of days on the market is less than 30 in Ramsey County. In most cases, it takes less than a month to sell a house.
The reason for fewer sales is that fewer people want to put their house on the market and move because interest rates are above 7.5%. People may want to upgrade to a new house but they do not want to upgrade to a mortgage with much higher payments due to a much higher interest rate.
It would be nice if the Federal Reserve would stop raising interest rates. The slowing housing market will impact the rest of the economy if it hasn’t already.
