The Clark County residential housing market began to come down from a summer high point in September, with sales and listings both down from August – although September’s sales numbers were still higher year-over-year.
That’s according to the latest Market Action report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service, which was released Wednesday morning.
There were 757 pending sales in September, representing a 13.1 percent decrease from August’s 871 pending sales but a 9.9 percent increase over the 689 pending sales reported in September 2018.
It was a similar story with closed sales: September’s 731 closed sales fell 14.6 percent behind August’s 856 closed sales but stayed 8 percent ahead of the 677 closed sales reported in September 2018.
New listings didn’t fare quite as well. The 904 reported new listings fell 15.8 percent from August and also represented a 4.9 percent drop from September 2018.
The year-over-year rise in pending sales coupled with the decline in new listings signals a strong market for home sellers, according to Terry Wollam, managing broker at ReMax Equity Group in Vancouver. The increased sales were likely also spurred on by a reduction in interest rates in September, he said.
“Buyers looking (in September) could then buy a home they were looking at in August for less,” Wollam wrote in an email. “Rates are expected to stay lower which helps improve housing affordability for buyers looking to purchase now.”
The region’s inventory in months, a measurement of how long it would take to sell through the existing stock of housing on the market, grew slightly from 2.3 in August to 2.5 in September. The slight increase still leaves the inventory in months well below the 2.9 figure reported in September 2018, Wollam noted.
“This should mean another healthy spring for housing activity and reasonable appreciation in home values,” he wrote.
Sale prices also saw a drop from August but remained higher year-over-year. The average sale price was reported at $401,000 in September, compared to $415,100 in August and $392,000 in September 2018.
The median sale price was reported at $366,500, dropping from the $380,000 median in August but rising from the $355,000 median reported in September 2018.
Wollam said the drop in pricing might have been prompted by sellers seeking to sell through more of the existing inventory of homes before October, when the market typically enters a seasonal slowdown that continues through December.
“I would expect a bounce back of prices to some extent in the October statistics,” he wrote.
A monthly report from John L. Scott Real Estate offered a breakdown of sales activity by price range, which showed substantial variation in availability between the upper and lower ends of the market, consistent with a pattern observed in previous months.
Pending sales exceeded new listings for homes below $350,000, and the report listed less than one month of unsold supply in that pricing category, which the report characterized as a severe shortage.
Sales activity typically slows down in the winter, but CEO J. Lennox Scott wrote in the report that he expected to see a more intense winter market than last year.
“This is due to fewer unsold listings on the market than we usually see at this point in time,” he wrote. “The number of unsold listings will continue to go down once the winter cleanup of inventory begins.”
