Weekly Special | September 22, 2018

Year Over Year Homes Sales Decline In August

Home sales declined in August, pretty much wiping out the huge gain posted in July. When we look at July and August of this year, there were only three more homes sold than there were in the same two months last year.

Year over year home sales compares each month’s home sales with the same month from the prior year. Green lines indicate growth, while red lines show declines.

There have only been 14 declining months since the end of 2012, but the frequency of declines is increasing.

The growth rate of the housing recovery has been slowed by a combination of declining inventory, rising mortgage interest rates, and a healthy dose of buyer “sticker shock” as home prices are about 10% higher than when most of them started thinking about buying less than a year ago.

The fact that the number of home sales in Tallahassee is growing at a slower rate (up 3% through August versus same months in 2017) suggests we are approaching the normal capacity of the market. Many more units were sold during the explosive years from 2004 through 2006, a level were are still significantly below.

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