Weekly Special | November 9, 2020

Nothing Is Normal About Current Conditions

One could argue that markets never sit on normal conditions, and nothing supports this argument better than the percentage of listings selling each month.

Bar and line chart of homes sold and the percent of listings selling each month from 2008 to 2020, rising from near 3% to nearly 40% against a 15% to 20% normal range.

The graph above plots the percentage of listings that sell each month (red dots measured on the right vertical axis). The red field has been considered the “normal range”

for the past thirty years that I have been selling homes in Tallahassee.

I’ve only been collecting data on this since 2008, so we’re basically looking at thirteen years worth of information, but it says a lot.

During the housing market crash and recovery from 2007 through 2015, we saw lower than normal sales percentages. This means that supply was higher than demand and as little as 3% of homes listed for sale were actually selling in any given month.

But times change. Now we’re typically seeing more than a quarter of all listings sell each month, and even had a month soar where nearly 40% of the inventory sold.

This means that demand is now higher than supply and the inventory is turning-over much more quickly than what has been seen as normal.

Of course, these numbers shake out differently across our area and price ranges in the market, so use more specific information when selling.

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

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