The Jaw-Dropping Decrease in Rochester Area Inventory

Note: This was originally sent as part of a market report to area clients, but on the behest of some co-workers I will start posting the information in here also.

In Monroe County, there were an average of 11.53 closings per day/17 closings per business day for a total of 323 homes reported closed in the month of February. Unless their is a major spike in delayed reporting for homes closed, February 2019 will have the lowest number of total homes closed since they started keeping accurate statistics in 2006. The rate of homes closed in Monroe County per day is the lowest since January of 2011, which had an average of 11 homes closed per day/17.05 closings per business day.

The widely agreed upon causality for this is low home inventory. The average number of available homes over the last four years has dropped considerably, from 1,950 in February 2016, to 1,407 in Feb. 2017, to 1,062 a year ago, to 989 as of ten minutes ago.

(That's not to say there is a direct correlation between the number of homes available and the number of homes sold; this concept will be addressed in a longer, later post.)

For those who are visually inclined, I have included a graph courtesy of GRAR of historic homes for sale here: http://grar.stats.showingtime.com/infoserv/s-v1/Huhw-uTa

End Note: All data included was for MLS-only sales in Monroe County for single-family units (homes and condos)

Next: Multi-Family sale comparisons and the importance of the cash deal