Weekly Special | February 11, 2019

Year Over Year Home Sales Down 10%

Year over year home sales fell 10% in January when compared to January a year ago.

I assembled this graph with information provided by the Tallahassee Board of Realtors MLS, meaning it does not include sales that occurred outside of the MLS.

Plotting year over year home sales is a method of tracking the change in the market; it removes seasonal effects as it always compares the recent month with the same month last year. The green vertical lines show when a month records more home sales than that same month in the prior year, while red vertical lines report declines .

Housing Market Is Cooling Off What we are seeing is normal; the number of home sales has been steadily growing each year since 2012 and we should not expect every year to bring expansion without some fluctuation.

The rapid rise of mortgage interest rates last Summer shocked the market, while the drop in rates towards the end of the year only brought about a slight renewal in activity.

I expect a good year for sellers in 2019, inventory is low and buyer demand is still good and steady.

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