Despite an extremely low inventory of homes for sale around the country, the median list price has virtually remained unchanged from a year ago according to the latest housing data of 146 metro areas released by Realtor.com.
The total number of existing homes for sale fell 5.63 percent from December to January with 1,477,266 single-family homes, condos, townhomes, and co-ops listed for sale during the month. Compared to a year ago, there were 16.47 percent fewer homes available for purchase.
The median list price for an existing home in January was $187,000, down 0.47 percent from December but only a modest 0.80 percent higher than January of last year.
Year-over-year, the top five most improved area’s were located in California led by a 40.20 percent increase in Sacramento followed by the Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-Lompoc area (+32.15%), San Jose (+24.77%), Oakland (+24.11%) and San Francisco (+23.67%).
The area’s suffering the greatest decline in median list prices were Peoria-Pekin, IL (-14.22%), Columbia, MO (-11.43%), Charleston, WV (-9.61), Reading, PA (-8.13) and Fort Wayne, IN (-7.41%).
List prices are not necessarily indicative of selling prices, but may signal market sentiment by sellers. All together, seventy-eight of 146 areas saw an increase in their list prices while ten areas were unchanged from the previous year.
The average number of days that an existing home spent on the market fell to 108 in January from 111 in December and was down from 119 days in January of last year. Seventy-eight out of the 146 metropolitan areas required 100 days or more to sell a home.
Residents selling their homes in the southern region of South Carolina continued to wait the longest to sell their homes, averaging 163 days on the market. Residents in Oakland had the shortest wait for the 16th consecutive month, averaging 17 days on the market..
Tags: housing inventory, listed homes, home prices, median sales price, average list price
Source:
Realtor.com
Reported by Chris Moore
