Home Inventory Up and Sold Units Cut in Half

It’s the end of the year and major shifts in the market persist. With active inventory up and prices beginning to plateau, there are many questions about what 2023 may hold for the Durango real estate market. Let’s dig into the November statistics and try to make some predictions, welcome to The Real Estate Update. It’s December 8th 2022 and the brokers here at Alpenglow Properties would like to wish everyone a very Merry and Happy Holidays. I have such an incredible level of gratitude for this community and greatly appreciate you taking the time to watch these updates. It’s a labor of love and over the last two years it’s been an honor to help divulge and make sense of the incredible shifts in our real estate market, both positive and negative. So, today is no different, as yet another round of monthly stats are showing major changes to our landscape. When you look at the active single family home inventory in La Plata County for November year over year, we saw a 50% increase in active listings at 157 homes. This is down from 2022’s peak active inventory of 217 homes in July of this year. The increase in interest rates have directly impacted the demand in Durango and across the nation, and that is the major culprit in why our inventory increased and number of units sold have decreased. The good news, if you’d like to call it that, is that rates have dropped well below their peak of 7% so now buyers can now nab a sub 6% interest rate with the right lender. There are other highlights from last month that will help tell the story leading into 2023, namely pricing. We have experienced some of the highest median and average sales prices in the history of our market, which has caused Durango to level up into more of a luxury community. In November, single family homes in La Plata County had an average price of $890,000, an 18.5% decrease from the average price in November of last year. This price point was calculated by analyzing the sales of 49 homes in the county, which was only half of the number of homes sold in November of 2021. The “in-town” Durango supply of homes is the wildest outlier from a statistical standpoint as the increase in active inventory in November boasted a 222% increase year over year bringing the active inventory to a whopping 29 houses. When analyzing from a month’s supply standpoint, an indicator that outlines how long it would take to cycle through the current active listings, Durango single family homes month’s supply is up 350%. So, given all of this information from a single month snapshot, let’s try to make some predictions for the upcoming winter months using the crystal ball I don’t have. When you compare the summer’s peak home sales in July of 2021 to 2022, we can make the assumption that winter sales numbers will see a similar deviation. You’ll notice that the delta between the peaks year over year have correlation, so this leads me to believe that the units sold in January will be somewhere around 50 homes, if you look at the trough. Active listings, showing a contrasting correlation, should bottom out around 180 single family home units in Q1 of 2023. I’ll be sure to check in on these predictions next year to see if they were accurate, or if i should get my money back on the crystal ball. As always, if you’d like to know what’s going on in your neighborhood feel free to reach out on any of our social handles, @DurangoBrokers, or email me at Dan@AlpenglowProperties.com. Thank you for watching, and have a safe and relaxing holiday season. We’ll see you next time.

‍