It's hard to believe, but half the year has already flown past!  Let's take a few minutes to review some recent trends in the local housing market -- but first...

Now, starting with some data packed charts before we get to the colorful graphs...

Looking at the market overview above, here's what's popping out to me...

The green chart above is detached home sales, and the orange chart is attached home sales, and here's how things break down...

I use the graph above to see how we're doing in the current year as compared to the prior four years.  As you can see, the 625 home sales in the first half of this year is about on par (above two, below one) with the past three years when we have ended up with 1250+ home sales.  So, if I had to guess, we'll probably see between 1250 and 1300 home sales in total this year.

The graph above is the best indicator of overall long term trends.  Each data point reflects 12 months of sales data.  As you can see, the pace of home sales (orange line) has been declining slightly over the past year -- while the median price of those home sales has been inching upwards to its current level of $214,000.

I'm throwing this one (above) in for fun - because I haven't highlighted this fact lately.  The median sales price of detached homes is $232,000 thus far in 2019, and was $228,000 in 2018.  Both of these median sales prices are/were the highest median sales price we have seen for Harrisonburg and Rockingham County -- ever!  We've come by these prices slowly and steadily over the past five years.

Those new contracts, they keep getting signed!  A total of 122 properties went under contract in June 2019 as compared to 124 last June -- and when we look at the March-June timeframe, we find 558 contracts this year and 551 last year.  As such, this year's Spring/Summer buyers (and, incidentally, sellers) are certainly keeping pace with last year at this point.

And what are those buyers buying?  Well, it seems that they have fewer, and fewer, and fewer choices at any given point in time.  As shown above, current inventory levels (267 homes for sale) are 23% lower than they were a year ago -- and just about as low as we saw inventory levels drop over this past Winter!?!  Well priced, well prepared, well marketed new listings are going under contract quickly partially because of how few options buyers have these days.

Those buyers who are fortunate enough to secure a contract on one of the few available listings are super fortunate to find astoundingly low mortgage interest rates!  Over the past year, the average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate has fallen 18%, down to its current level of 3.73%.  I didn't think we'd see rates below 4% after they soared up to 4.5% a year or so ago - but today's buyers are certainly enjoying locking in some low housing payments given these low rates!

Let's pause there, folks.  Hopefully that gives you a good general sense of what is happening in our local housing market.  And as always, if you have follow up questions about YOUR portion of the local housing market - based on price range, neighborhood, property type, etc. - just let me know!