Weekly Special | October 25, 2018

Luxury Home Sales Continue Explosive Growth

The sale of homes priced above $700,000 have exploded through the first three quarters of 2018, up a whopping 123% over the same three quarters in 2017.

Even million dollar homes are on fire, up a staggering 113% and posting a record high number of sales through September which is 55% higher than the previous best year ever (2015).

As Halloween is approaching, I will say that these numbers are “scary good.” They are good in that this segment of the housing market is still over-supplied with homes, but they are also scary because this rate of sales likely won’t be sustained. That’s the thing about “records” … they are uncommon.

The graph above is a great image for determining where buyers are most active, and it’s obvious that luxury home sales are a very small percentage of the market (1.4% of all homes sales exceeded a $700K sales price).

Homes under $100K are down 7% through September, while homes under $200K are down 2%. Homes under $300K are down 2.3%, and homes under $400K are flat. Overall, home sales through September are up 2.7% when compared to the same time last year, but rising mortgage interest rates appear to be softening the market. We expect a slightly “up” at year’s end.

The original one-page Weekly Special PDF is still available.