In the battle of dueling forces in form of low supply and low demand, low demand is presently winning. This continues to push prices down. Active Inventory rose for the second consecutive week. Expect that to continue and when it does, it’ll ease the impact that low new inventory has on pricing. Speaking of new inventory, New Listings inched upward and should continue to in the coming months. Mortgages rates rose slightly and have now hovered in the 6.2%-6.3% range for four weeks. Homes under contract rose while homes closed fell. As for the 30-day numbers, Median home price dropped by over 4% compared to last week’s 30-day numbers while Average Price stayed fairly flat. The sample size continues to be small with only 67 single-family homes closing in the last 30 days. Days on Market took another big jump and has now surpassed 50 days for the first time in years. % over asking price decreased again and is approaching -10%. Price/Sqft dropped 5%.

With fewer buyers in the market, there is less competition for homes. Therefore, homes are staying on the market longer and going for less. This creates a highly leveraged position for buyers that are still actively searching. Under normal circumstances, homes going for nearly 10% under asking, on average, could only mean a market “crash”. However, a drop like this succeeding a truly rare run of increasing prices is pretty expected. Combine that with the fact that we have such a small 30-day sample size and an abysmal month of weather and it becomes highly predictable. What is also highly predictable is the increase in buyer and seller activity that will occur in the coming months.

So, buyers realize that this is a moment of opportunity in terms of leverage and sellers know that with a changing season, so should the number of buyers in the market.