Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in Greenville South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune Realtor right here in Greenville you can find all of my contact information in the show notes if you need to reach out to me for any of your real estate needs and just a reminder as always please support this content by simply subscribing on whatever app or platform that you're listening or watching on we're on YouTube Spotify Apple Amazon Music I mean everything so please hit that little subscribe button if you can like or leave a rating or a review would really appreciate that as well we have the monthly indicators they came in at a good time this month sometimes the showing time service that provides these monthly indicators sometimes it's slower than other times I don't know what causes that but we have the monthly indicators the statistics for the month of August and we need to go over this because we talk we talk a lot about statistics on the show it's a very important part of the show and that's just the that's just the nature of the content that I like to produce I guess but right now there's a lot happening and on top of there being a lot happening which we've talked about in other episodes with regard to mortgage rates and the 10 year yield and the economy as a whole we also have we're in an interesting time of year the month of August is a time of year that can be surprising to people in fact there was a someone from out of state recently that's an out of state investor that I was explaining the seasonality of the Greenville market to and it was very confusing that July tends to kind of cool off and then we tend to ramp up a little bit in August and then we have a big cool down after Labor Day that was not comparable to his local market which is interesting but that is exactly what happens here in Greenville we tend to see some things rebound a little bit in the month of August and I think we'll see some of that in the data so let's hop right in you can already see it if you're looking on YouTube but I have the monthly indicators right here and we've got the new listings data now new listings as you can see for a while we've been trending like way above year over year the for new listings just having way more listings the past year than we did the year prior well that has slowed down in recent months in fact July was negative year over year August we went back into the positive but not super not super high in comparison to the year before 4.2% higher so we had 2484 new listings in August versus 2384 the year before I'm not drawing any major conclusions from that outside of we're reaching kind of the ceiling in terms of new listings coming on the market how many more can come on the market versus the year prior and of course a lot of this is new construction as well which we talked about in prior episodes pending sales they were negative in July as well but they went up slightly in August they went from 1539 August of last year to 1570 of August of this year 2% increase and month over month you can see the little rebound here and that is a little rebound that you see very often in the data happens around this time of year all the time and again I think the reason why that happens is the month of July a lot of people get out of the state cause it's so hot go to the beach whatever to try to cool down go visit family who knows what basically the last part of the summer before everyone goes back to school of course now a lot of the schools are starting earlier than they used to earlier in August and then you know people are still willing to move in the month of August and September but once we start getting closer to those holidays they don't want to as much and so you'll see this these pending sales will come in sometimes in the month of August a little bit higher than the month before but the important thing is year over year it was slightly higher but nothing too dramatic close sales we went up from 1530 close sales in August of last year to 1544 so again we've been trending with record high close sales and I'm guessing if I went back and look this is probably a record for the month of August actually let's look at August of last year January February March April May June July August oh OK that was August of last year yeah you can see that we're very close to August of last year let me look at 2024 January February March April May June July August it looks like August of 2024 was maybe slightly higher than August of this year I'd have to go back and look at that firm data but we're trending pretty close to what we have now multiple August in a row not a whole lot of movement there I again I think we've kind of reached a ceiling with the current conditions of the economy mortgage rates and all of that with how many more close sales pending sales all of that that we can have this time of year days on market we've been seeing that basically you know it it's kind of fluctuated here a little bit now usually days on market starts to go up towards the second half of the year okay that's pretty normal here's what's interesting and actually before I get into the interesting part I'll just tell you what it did days on market was 56 days on market until sale so reasonably you can expect your home to be on the market for a couple of months before it sells that was up from 49 days a year before so that's a 14.3% year over year increase now here here's the interesting thing we bottomed out for the year in June 52 days on market then July went up to 53 August 56 so we've been on the upturn basically since the month of June was the was the bottom we've been going up since then the interesting thing is this that has been the case basically post covid for every year that we've seen the bottom of days on market so that this is one of the core indicators for how hot the market is right how quickly homes are selling alright so when the market's hot during the peak times homes sell quicker when the market's slow homes sell slower that's why you always see it top out around the vertical lines on the on the graph that I'm showing you that's January so you see it top out around December January February those are the slowest months of the year for real estate in the Greenville market Greenville Spartanburg Anderson market whatever the upstate the interesting part is this pre covid it didn't start to go up until much later in the year and so what we have seen now the past several years is the market fizzling out much quicker after Memorial Day and I've told you guys that Memorial Day is one of the markers that we look at for seasonality it does that that does signal the end of the absolute peak of the season it doesn't signal the end of the you know of the broader peak season that goes through the summer but it signals the end of the hottest part of the peak season which in this market is the spring but what we're also seeing now is that the summer part of the peak the second half of the peak season which is not as hot as the first half but the second half is starting to slow down quicker more aggressively sooner in the calendar etcetera than it used to it used to be that once we got to you know around October November that was when we started to see the days on market start to start to go up for now several years in a row the pattern has been set that this happens earlier people need to be aware of that if you're a seller you need to be aware that once you get to the month of July the market has been slowing down more aggressively than in the past people think oh July that's still peak season yes it is but it's not the peak of the peak season okay it is it it's still the hot spring summer market but it's not the hottest part of that market so just be aware of that median sales price we have now had our second month in a row of a year over year decrease all right so this is gonna be an important part of this episode we went down from the median sales price last month sorry last year was 3 24 7 40 in the month of August it went down to 320,000 this year that's a 1.5% decrease year over year and again the second straight month of a decline in this median sales price last month it went down 2% the month before that it was flat the month before that may it was up 1.3% and then April was flat if we want to go back a little bit further March was up 3.1% and then February's down point three % so since February the past one two three four five six seven months all right the past seven months we've only had two months that have been positive on the median sales price that is as big of an indicator of any of the slowdown that we've seen and of the of those seven months three of them nearly half have been in the negatives two have just been flat so again the market is really really like we're really trying hard right sellers are really trying hard to get their top prices but we're still seeing this weakness okay now 2% decreases 1.5% decreases those aren't huge like I'm not whatever I'm not drawing massive conclusions from this but a trend is starting to form and this is what we look for we're looking for trends right looking for year over year trends we're looking for in some cases month over month trends this is a big month over month trend where now again the pattern is starting to happen where we're not seeing much we're not seeing prices going up now that's not necessarily mean that every single home is not seeing their value go up that's not how this works this data is pulling in like we've talked about many time new construction which builders are lowering their prices on new construction and that's a big drag on this but new construction then also becomes a drag on existing home sales as well because people have two options cheaper new construction or more expensive existing home that people have lived in for 30 years that new construction that's cheaper and brand new that's an attractive proposition right are you gonna buy a brand new car that's cheaper than a car that has that's exactly the same but has mileage on it and several years of wear and tear you're going to probably consider the new construction right or the new car versus the older one same thing for new construction a lot of people are coming to that conclusion and that's not even factoring in all the incentives these builders are offering so be aware of that that context but again this does track with the market even though it's not 1 to 1 in terms of it being telling us whether the market is appreciating or depreciating not for every single house but for the market as a whole this does tell us what direction the market is going in right now the direction is going more towards a price correction and more favorability towards buyers the average sales price which I'm I don't draw massive conclusions from this but if you're interested the average is 414,737 and that's actually a pretty substantial increase 4.5% year over year increase on the average what that tells me is that homes in the upper price point are selling and showing appreciation that shouldn't come as a surprise to you because guess who the people are in the market that are not rate sensitive it's the people that can buy million dollar homes right they generally speaking are not going to be affected by mortgage rates going into the 70s and so you know a lot of them are buying cash or putting humongous down payments and it's kind of like okay so mortgage rates are at 7% who cares still gonna buy you know this nice retirement home or this nice second home or whatever and so I don't draw massive conclusions from that except for that the upper end of the price spectrum when it comes to real estate is doing better than the lower end in terms of selling percent of list price received this is kind of interesting it actually went up point one % year over year so it's now sitting at 98.3% that means if you list a home for $100,000 which if you do it needs a lot of work but if you list a home for 100,000 you can reasonably expect to get 98,300 and again that's up from 98.2 the year before so basically flat nothing crazy it's just interesting that it increased a little bit that's an indicator that sellers are coming to grips with the fact that they need to price their homes better I have personally seen this in in in the marketplace and so I know that that's a real thing that's happening and so as sellers learn how to adapt to the changing market conditions they price their homes better realtors help them price their homes better and the amount the spread between what the list prices and what the final contract price ends up being ends up being smaller housing Affordability Index we got back up to 100 for the first time since April which is great right great for buyers good for sellers too in in a lot of ways this is where we wanna be we wanna be at least at 100 it was 99 a year before so we got our market got a little bit more affordable the past year however this is not baking in the fact that we've now had two straight weeks of very negative mortgage rate movement and so I'm not expecting for this to hold for the month of September unless we see prices come way down the month of September so the reason why this got to 100 was because prices had that 1.5% drop but this number also factors in mortgage rates so as they get you know increasingly less affordable expect to see this number come down below 100 which just means that the median household cannot afford the median priced home at 100 that means the median household can afford on medium the average home and so we want that we want that right we want people to have a a a market where they can actually afford what's going on my phone by the way is absolutely blowing up I'm getting lit up I haven't I have not received any phone calls for the most part all day my phone is getting lit up as I'm doing this episode I've got it on silent but I can I still am getting some notifications here so it's crazy alright inventory of homes for sale continues the downward trend in terms of year over year so we've been in double digit increases year over year for quite some time that finally broke for the month of August we saw inventory only increased 8.5% year over year so it was 6,003 in units of inventory in August of last year that was increased to 65 12 August of this year 8.5% increase like I already said again we're reaching the ceiling we're reaching the ceiling and we're seeing again the crest line happening earlier than we've seen it in any other years this is a very so August month over month was down in inventory from July that's very very unusual and it's interesting from the standpoint of when we go back to let's look at new listings we look at new listings you know they're still trending pretty high but month supply or not month supply just total inventory is really coming down or appearing to come down of course September could buck the trend but it appears that we're having an earlier seasonality in terms of there being less inventory and that's fascinating it's even less inventory than the month of June so this is gonna be something to track I'm very curious to see if this trend holds if it does then that would indicate that that sellers are starting to pull back in some way month supply of inventory we talked last week that Info Sparks had it at 4.3 this data brings it at 4.2 month supply of inventory that's up from the year before which is 4.1 month supply of inventory again this is a number that that we're tracking closely I 4.5 right is the number I've been saying that that where I will definitely say we are in a buyer's market but we're awfully close we are awfully close to that right now and you know even though month over month so the month of July was 4.3 so we came down from that month over month but we've been trending here at this at this 4.2 4.3 basically for the entire year and it normally starts to come down towards the end of the year as sellers you know pull their homes off the market and fewer homes get listed and so this will be very interesting to see if that happens or if demand pulls out before the supply does and if that happens then we'll see this must supply of inventory go up and then that's when we'll potentially see this market flip in in a way that the data we can actually say from the data it's a buyer's market of course you know this is all backwards looking data and so I can tell you from the way it feels it feels like it's favoring buyers the data it hasn't yet started to fully reflect that in the data but the trend line is pointing increasingly in that direction so we'll keep track of all that and you guys that watch or listen to the show you'll be the first ones to know because I will tell you and I'll just be completely honest I've got buyers and sellers so I don't have a reason to sugarcoat this data it's gonna be good for some people and bad for others that's just the reality of the situation but that's it for today's episode thank you guys so much for watching or listening again like rate review subscribe go to the show notes if you need a realtor in the Greenville Spartanburg Anderson area Pickens County whatever all of the counties around here Lawrence County we I handle all the counties that touch Greenville County so please reach out to me in contact info in the show notes thank you guys so much we will talk again next time!