Here at 5Market Realty, we create monthly videos about the current Athens area real estate market. In this video, we specifically discuss shifts in the market with housing inventory
ey there. If you follow us here on our YouTube channel or our website, you know what I say almost every month for one of these. My name is Scott Talley. I am the owner broker here at Five Market Realty, and what we like to do here at our company is provide our past clients, our current clients, our colleagues and people that follow us. Monthly updates on the Athens area market, what’s going on, what trends we are seeing, what you might want to be aware of.
And right now, here at August 1, it is for me, you’re probably watching this August 2, maybe another day in the month, but we have definitely seen some signs that the market is undergone the shift. We’ve been pointing to this for some time. Gonna try to keep this update a little more truncated, a little smaller. We have another company where we handle property management and terms are going on right now, so time is important. But if you’re interested in Athens area homes for sale, new listing videos or market updates, be sure to click subscribe and I’ll go ahead and get started.
Increasing Buyer Power
First, as it says right there in front of you, has the market shifted and more demand for buyers gives them more power? With buyer demand going down, buyers are having more power in this market than I think they may realize. Now, if you do follow us, you know, we track four main things over the two primary counties. New listings, days on market, the price and the amount of sold. This right here is Athens, Clark and Oconee County only according to the classic MLS, which is Athens. If you sprinkle this in with George MLS, you’re going to get more numbers. But we’ve been tracking from Athens, so that’s what we stay on.
Not going to spend a terrible amount of time here because there’s more things I want to point out. But what’s been going on is we’ve seen small percentage change. We’ve got a few more listings that we had last year at almost 12%. We’ve got a little bit more days on market at almost 5%. Average sold price is now just below 7% for the year when compared to 2023. Now, these prices are high, but the rate at how they’re going up is slowing down and the total home sold is only up 7.3%, just over a thousand, which is like we said before, it’s better than last year, but it’s still not great.
Month of July, this is same trend we’re seeing. The new listings slightly down, days on market up about 20%. That’s probably the more significant number here. I don’t want to spend too much time on these numbers that we track every month. But I do want to keep tracking them. Bigger number, 15% 16% increase on the average sold price the month of July. But the total amount of homes sold right now, it looks like it’s down 16 and a half percent and 138. The reality is I’m doing this the afternoon of Thursday, August 1. There’s going to be some real estate agents that in the coming days will put in listings that sold last month that they haven’t already. We’re probably going to get a lot closer to, I don’t know, 150 on that.
Today had two separate lenders each out to me and ask the question: How many more homes are there on the market today than there were last year? Well, the answer is, as of this moment right now, Thursday, August 1, there’s 130 more. And that represents a 55% increase in our inventory. That is significant.
But let’s get here to some of the things I really want to talk about. I want to talk about inventory and listings expired and withdrawn, and how this market is shifting and what you need to know as a home seller and a buyer. This is the monthly inventory of homes. We’ve been tracking this for a while. This. This is the amount of homes for sale in Clark and Oconee County. Look at this. August of the same time last year, 236. I want you to know that today had two separate lenders each out to me and ask the question, hey, I know you’ll know. How many more homes are there on the market today than there were last year? Well, the answer is, as of this moment right now, Thursday, August 1, there’s 130 more. And that represents a 55% increase in our inventory. That is significant.
366 is not the amount that shifts the market. And we start seeing prices fall. But it means there’s 366 homes out there with their hands up saying, hey, we need a buyer. And if you’re a buyer, you need to realize that could be an opportunity for you. No matter what the interest rates are, this is the monthly total sales for Clark and Oconee County. We always talk about wanting to be at 200. And as you can see, that dotted line represents that we got close, and that was may market peak. Now, if you remember a few times a few months back, we did have the market peak kind of predicted with a question mark right there. Well, as you can see, what happened in June with 42 less sales than May. And now what’s showing, only 138 sales so far might go up to 150 eventually. You know, it’s definite that May is the market peak. So we’re probably going to see this level out.
And if history shows, we’re going to see August and September. And then another little teeter off again. There are talk about interest rates being lowered next month. If you are a buyer or a home seller, that could get somebody off the cliff. So it’s not like I’m saying there is no hope, but there’s not going to be such a significant change in interest rates that it’s going to shift the market.
Pay Attention to Price
You need to be paying attention to your price as a home seller and as a buyer, you need to realize there might be opportunity in the end of the year to have some advantages on your side of the table. And let’s go to the next slide here and see what else we’d like to talk about monthly new listings. We looked at this a little while ago and I want to explain to you how the inventory is stacking up now in January of 2023. That’s January. Last year we had 133 come to market and then we went way up in February. Let’s look at January of this year, January of 2024. Instead of 133 listings, there were 200 listings.
So you see January, February, March, all these are higher numbers. We started this year highly optimistic and based on what has happened with interest rates, the economy, political things that can impact this, it has not been the year that people had hoped for, and that is just the case. The reason we’re still ahead is because the beginning of the year was so much stronger than the previous beginning of the year before. So basically we had a strong January, February, March, April, May was still good and we really had a disappointing June and July. And so we should expect to see less transactions. But it doesn’t mean you cannot sell your house or it’s a bad time to buy a house.
Looking at the, what we call the monthly absorption rate, we’ve looked at this a few times. This is basically the amount of homes for sale relative to the amount that they’re being taken off the market. With sales right now we’re at 2.7, which is almost three months. Almost four months would be a balanced market, maybe, maybe five months. But look at where we were the same time last year. July was one and a half months of inventory. Now we’re at 2.7. That is another sign of a shift in the market that is taking place with inventory. It’s another sign that we’re pointing to, and this is one of the last ones I want to end with.
I’m going to get my head a little bit out of the way. This is looking at the expired and withdrawn listings only in the Athens MLS. That little right there, you see at the bottom it says classic MLS. That means the Athens area MLs doesn’t include George MLs. This is not looking at zillow realtor.com dot Clark and Oconee County. And what this does, this does is January to July. That amount of time from January 1, July 31 in 2022-23. And now this year, what were the amount of listings that were drawn or expired in the MLS? Now these listings can be withdrawn because the seller changed their mind. They can be expired because they didn’t sell. What this means is something that went MLS and it didn’t have a standard market time and it did not sell.
Expired Listings Increase Year Over Year
So this is what we’re looking at. 2022 97, less than 100. I mean, still a strong market. I don’t remember 2022 feeling that good, but the numbers should have looked better when I look back. And then we’re looking at now 120 and that’s 2023. So that’s a significant growth. But as of today, there were 171 expired and withdrawn listings, representing a 76% growth from 2022. That is a significant number, 76. So what’s happening is the buyer demands gone down some of these homes, even though they’re good homes, with the high prices, less buyers, we’re seeing them sit and not get taken off the market.
So what I want you to know, if you’re a seller, your price is important. You need to be considering that. And if you’re a buyer, September and October might be really good times to find a better price, to find a better concession. Even if the interest rates do come down, let’s say a quarter of a point, half a point, something significant that might give you a better payment. But the home prices are still most of the problem we’re seeing for most of the buyers. Home prices have gone up so fast, it’s hard for people to keep up with them. And that’s why the buyer demand has dropped. Interest rates haven’t helped. But this really is a story about price.
But in talking about our group here, Five Market Realty, you can reach out. Anybody here to help you? Our office is located on millage. I’m actually proud of this group. I went longer than I said. I can see it’s about eight minutes now. 38 posted sales in Clark and Oconee County over the month of July. This little group posted almost 20 of them. And that represents a pretty good chunk of the market for what we are, which is a smaller boutique firm that is not full of 100 plus people. So proud of that group. Info at Five Market Realty.
Ready to Buy Or Sell? Have May on The Mind!
Reach out to somebody if you got questions about buying, questions about selling, or even thinking about something next year. What do I need to know now to be ready to go next March? And remember what we saw earlier. May was the market peak in the last three years. So if you’re thinking next year, you need to have May on your mind. Have a great week. Stay cool. And I guess we’ll be getting the students back into town very soon. Thanks for sticking with me for almost nine minutes. And I said I’d be short. Very sorry.