My wife really likes barn swallows. I do too, but when they set up a nest in our garage and proceeded to sit on one particular rail over the back of my car and mess up my back window every day as they grew to maturity; I was a little less joyful. By July, all of the babies had fledged and were out looking for any flying insects. The cool thing is when I’m mowing the fields on my tractor kicking up lots of insects, it looks like a World War I dog fight with swallows flying in every direction including right at me and then dodging away at the last second.
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08/01/18
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Inventory
|
Contracts
|
Last Mo. Solds
|
Last Month Solds+ Contracts
|
YTD Solds
|
YTD+ Contracts
|
Months of Supply
|
MoS w/ Contracts
|
Last Mo. MoS Annlzd
|
| < $600K |
3 |
2 |
1 |
3 |
9 |
11 |
2.3 |
2.3 |
3.0 |
| $600-$800K |
17 |
5 |
6 |
11 |
29 |
34 |
4.1 |
4.3 |
2.8 |
| $800K-$1M |
28 |
11 |
5 |
16 |
34 |
45 |
5.8 |
5.3 |
5.6 |
| $1-$1.5M |
78 |
12 |
16 |
28 |
61 |
73 |
9.0 |
9.1 |
4.9 |
| $1.5-$2M |
78 |
17 |
15 |
32 |
60 |
77 |
9.1 |
8.6 |
5.2 |
| $2-$3M |
141 |
16 |
17 |
33 |
65 |
81 |
15.2 |
14.8 |
8.3 |
| $3-$4M |
100 |
13 |
6 |
19 |
41 |
54 |
17.1 |
15.7 |
16.7 |
| $4-$5M |
47 |
3 |
5 |
8 |
20 |
23 |
16.5 |
17.4 |
9.4 |
| $5-6.5M |
63 |
4 |
3 |
7 |
19 |
23 |
23.2 |
23.3 |
21.0 |
| $6.5-$10M |
52 |
3 |
1 |
4 |
5 |
8 |
72.8 |
55.3 |
52.0 |
| > $10M |
36 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
8 |
8 |
31.5 |
38.3 |
36.0 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| TOTAL |
643 |
86 |
76 |
162 |
351 |
437 |
12.8 |
12.5 |
8.5 |
The reason I mention this is that there is a saying that a single swallow does not a summer make. Well it’s July and lots of swallows do make a summer. Our sales are up a lot over June, which is unusual as June is almost always our highest sales month.
For those folks who read my June report you may have been expecting this as while June 2018 sales were down over 2017 we had a lot of pending contracts. Well in July 76 of those contracts closed. This was a 43% jump over the 53 sales that we had in July of 2017. Also, our overall sales are officially ahead of last year 351 sales to 342 sales.
Not only are our July sales higher than June 2018 they are also above our 10-year average. Contracts are continuing to look good with 86 contracts waiting to close which is 6 contracts more than at the end of July 2017, so August 2018 should also be a good month.
On the inventory side, we are continuing to run high with 643 single-family homes up 44 listings from 599 houses last year. Folks that might have moved over the next couple of years, have decided that with the new Tax Act that they are going to move in 2018, leaving us with April level inventory in August when inventory is normally down significantly from its spring peak, but in just about every other way things are looking up sellers. Our total monthly transactions, sales plus contracts, are up significantly with 29 more transactions as of the end of July 2018; from 133 in July 2017 to 162 houses in July 2018.
From $800,000 to $1,000,000 contracts are up 9 houses over last year and year to date sales are now u over last year. This is a total of 14 more transactions this year than last year or a 33% increase.
The result is that the lower end of the market is tight. In fact, the extra inventory we’ve gotten under $1 million has been helpful as it is giving people in an area where we normally have a strong sellers’ market a few more options.
The additional sales in July were concentrated from $1- $4 million where we were up 20 sales over last year. This is also the area where we have had an increase of 33 houses in inventory, so as of July, more inventory is finding more buyers. The word seems to be getting out that we have some low property taxes for the NYC metro area.
There are two area where we continue to see some signs of weakness, one is getting better and one still needs some improvement. In our market from $1.0 – 1.5 million market. We had good sales in July, but we are still down 13 sales from last year. At the high-end our over $10 million market has been doing stellar, but the market from $6.5 – $10 million has lost some of the momentum that it had earlier in the year. Inventory is still down as more people are deciding to stay in their houses in this price range, but total transactions are down 9 from last year. The result is a big jump in months of supply for this price range.
Now I’d like to say that July 2018 was a great month with sales way up over last July, but, last July like this June was a poor month for sales. When you look at the 10-year average for sales it was only a pretty good month. July 2018 sales had 76 sales, up 23 sales from last year, but up only 3 sales over our ten-year average of 72.9 sale. You might think we just switched poor sales months, but when you add June and July together this year and for last year, 2018 sales are still up by 8 sales.
The key thing is that it is up. As several articles have pointed out Westchester County and NYC have been suffering significant sales drops over last year. To have our sales go up, when our surrounding areas are going down is a significant factor.
The even better news is that contracts continue to be up over last year with 6 more contracts than last year. The odds are therefore that we will do better than last year in August 2018, but not by as big a margin as we saw in July.
If you are in the NYC Metro area, it’s a good time to be living in Greenwich.
