The Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS (GAAR) releases local housing market numbers on a monthly basis. GAAR recently released April’s numbers and I wanted to give you a look. GAAR releases this information publicly and you can always find them yourself. However, I know numbers can be hard to digest so that’s why I’m here every month to break them down for you.
Single-family detached homes
Let’s dive right into single-family detached homes in the greater Albuquerque area. First, a detached home is a residence that is not attached or affixed to another building. It is completely free-standing on its own lot or property line.
Looking at the market numbers, we saw increases in both the median and average sale prices. I like to lead with home prices because that’s typically what buyers and sellers care about, right? We want to know how much money we’ll make or need to spend. April 2020 saw a Median Sales Price increase of 8.3% from $216,900 last year to $235,000. We saw an Average Sales Price increase of 4.1% from $259,608 last year to $270,245. Not only are we seeing an increase in sales price we witnessed a decrease in days on the market of 32% from 42 days in April 2019 to 32 days in April of this year. What does this mean? This means that on average homes are spending less time on the market from going live on the market and “For Sale”, with that fancy sign on your yard, to getting under contract, having a buyer sign that purchase agreement and move forward with the deal.
Why are we seeing an increase in price and less time active on the market? Well likely because inventory is incredibly low. From April 2019 to April 2020 we saw an inventory decrease of 36% from 2,460 homes in 2019 to only 1,575 homes last month. What does this mean? Well, that means we are in what professionals like to call a Sellers Market–a sellers market meaning there are more buyers wanting homes than sellers selling homes. With that I do want to go over the amount of total pending and closed sales. So, pending means when you get a purchase agreement signed and a buyer and seller go under contract. April of this year saw a decrease in pending sales of 11.4%. This sounds like a lot when you hear eleven percent. However, looking at the hard numbers that decrease is from 1,243 pending sales in 2019 to 1,101 this year so a difference of 142. In terms of closed sales, closed meaning keys have been handed over and ownership has changed, we saw a decrease of 16.4 % from 1,139 last year to 952 this year so a total difference of 187. Why are we seeing these decreases? Well, very likely from CO-VID19. This pandemic has changed lots of things: the amount of toilet paper we apparently need, daily fashion trends, and most obviously our happy hour times. But big picture, some buyers may be hesitant to go through with such a big purchase at this time. Some may be furloughed or unemployed so need to wait. Even with that, from those numbers we saw before, we are still seeing a demand for homes.
single-family attached homes
Let’s move on to single-family attached home numbers. Attached means affixed to another building like a town home, duplex, or condo. The month of April saw decreases across the board. So, for sales prices, the median sales price decreased 8.1% from $178,250 last year to $163,750. The average sales price decreased 8.7% from $190,716 to $174,195. Much like detached homes we are seeing a decrease in days on market and inventory. The average days on market decreased 5.3% from 38 days to 36 days. And inventory decreased 33.9% from 245 attached homes last year to 162. Also, much like the detached homes, and likely because of the global pandemic we saw a decrease in total pending and closed sales. For pending we saw a decrease of 10.6% from 132 attached homes last year to 118. So, ten percent again sounds like a lot but the bigger look at hard numbers shows a difference of only 14. For closed sales we saw a decrease of 7.7% from 104 last year to 96 this year.
Those are the numbers. I know they’re a lot, but they’re important to have. Especially in times of near constant change. I just want to remind you all that even with a global pandemic happening outside our doors Real Estate is still deemed essential. If you need to buy or sell we are adapting to meet your needs and make that happen for you.
Are you in the market to buy or sell today? Contact me today.
ABQExpert 