We’re looking at the four week period from 11 August to 7 September, for this year and last. The objective – to compare market activity for townhomes during those two periods.
Listings and Sales
Listings were up slightly, going from 72 to 82. But the news is in the sales figures. They dropped to just 48 units, down from 71 a year earlier. Last year for every townhouse listed there was a sale in the same period. This year, for every 8 units listed, there were only 5 sales.
What about the previous four week period (last month)? There were 66 listings and 60 sales. So for whatever reason, townhouse sales definitely slumped during the most recent period.
Sales Velocity
Sales velocity measures the average length of time a unit remained on the market before selling. Given the decline in the number of sales, I would have expected a larger drop in sales velocity. Overall, it went from 39 days on market last year to 43 days this year (and for used units, the figures were 30 and 35 days, respectively). However, when you take into account that sales velocity is based only on units that actually sold, the relatively small drop in sales velocity doesn’t send a strong signal either way.
Prices
The overall average selling price moved ahead from about $348K during the four week period last year to about $370K for this year’s period. When sales of newly constructed units are taken out of the equation, the average year over year increase surprisingly increases a bit, going from about $331K to about $361K which represents just over 9%. The last report guesstimated an increase of about 12%.
The usual reminder about average sales prices applies: based on so few transactions, average prices in any four week period don’t mean very much. Trends take time to emerge.
Price Adjustments
There isn’t much news here. During last year’s report period 50 of 58 sales of non-new construction were at prices lower than originally listed. This year, the figures are 36 of 41. The average price reduction of used units was just under $13K this year, versus about $11K last year.
Summary
A lower percentage of sales versus listings, a reduction of sales velocity, and a slightly larger average price reduction are all factors suggesting a cooling of the townhouse market compared with last year. Average prices have advanced year over year, but I’m beginning to suspect that most of that average increase took place some time ago. We’ll see.
Next week, it’s back to lots and acreage.
Bye for now,
...Victoria's blogging real estate professional.
