Single Family Listings - Dane County Trends

[Jack Medford]

With the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 a lot of people have questions about what the impact to the real estate market will be. Only time will tell, of course, but for now I've got the numbers for listings of Single Family homes in Dane County. 

Specifically I am comparing the numbers for March. For now we've got March 1st-22nd for the years 2015-2020 to see if there are any observable trends in how many listings (and at what price ranges) are coming online. 

For anyone interested, I'll be doing an ongoing weekly update on my LinkedIn every Monday and will post monthly results here on BP. 

Total Listings March 1st-22nd  
2015: 657
2016: 585
2017: 589
2018: 588
2019: 517
2020: 544

Total Listings Past Week (16th-22nd)
2015: 212
2016: 167
2017: 156
2018: 166
2019: 170
2020: 158

As many know, we've had an inventory shortage during the last few years. That doesn't appear to have changed much. On the bright side, 2020 shows the first real uptick in listings over this period. However, this has slowed somewhat in the past week. In addition, 2020 is still below the average for the period, which is 580. 

It will be interesting to see what listings look like for the first week of the Wisconsin lock down. 

One interesting thing to note... The number of listings can vary quite a bit based on the day of the week. Notice in the pic below how all the red lines correspond with the weekend. 

Total Listings by Price Range
Year      <$300k       $300k-$450k      >$450k
2015:        396              164                  97
2016:        328              155                 102
2017:        288              193                 108
2018:        249              209                 130
2019:        192              211                 114
2020:        202              216                 126

Nothing terribly shocking here. 2020 follows the same trend that we've seen since 2015. Prices are rising in Dane County, so we're seeing fewer homes under $300k than at the start of this period. Similary, we are seeing more and more homes fill the upper end of these ranges. 

Percent of Homes Listed Within Each Range

Despite COVID-19 worries, we have yet to see the price of listings become affected. 2020 marks the new high point for listings above $450k with 23.16%, while also marking the new low of homes listed below $350k with 37.13%

Zooming in, however, we might be seeing a new trend emerge. 

When looking at the percentages of the last week (March 16th-22nd, 2020) we see a somewhat significant shift. Here's how the percentage of listings in each range breakdown...

Price Range      Percent of Total
<$300k:                   43.67%
$300k-$450k:           37.97%
>$450k:                   18.35%

It appears, if anything, the reaction to the current uncertainty may be that prices are beginning to shift downward. Then again, this could just be a normal fluctuation that happens from week to week. We'll see if this holds up as we move forward.