January 2024 Statistics and PRO Recommendation

David and Julie discuss the mixed reports about the market and their individual businesses.  They also consider the need for the Pinellas Realtor Organization to stratify the higher price points for statistical reporting and leave the lower priced properties in a single category.  

Want to work with us? David Vann can be found here, and Julie Jones can be found here! Reach out! We're nice, and we'd love to hear from you!

Transcript

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Hi David. Hi Julie. How are you? I'm doing well. We were talking about coffee before we started recording. Yes, and we like that coffee shop called The Blend. Yes, they are opening a lot of locations and I'm super excited because they're opening one in my neighborhood. Yes, and we want to come over to your neighborhood and go to that coffee shop because it's close to us. It is close. It's probably the closest to you. It is. Now, I think they're going to open the Kawa on 4th Street a little further north, so that might be okay. But, you know, it's just a drive thru. We like to be able to go to the coffee shop and go inside. Oh, yeah. That is a, that is cool. You know, that Kawa is kind of a cool concept because it's containers. I know. Stacked on each other like Legos. It's crazy. Pretty cool. I'm excited to see them finish it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got Grass and sidewalks finished now. So there's a chance it might open soon. I have been going out for coffee this week because my coffee maker needed like a professional cleaning. So I, most days didn't get coffee till two o'clock and had the worst headache. I'm a coffee addict. Can you say neglect? Yes. Well, it's funny because my child is home from college and I said, Oh, I'm putting you on this coffee. Cleaning project, clean my coffee maker for me. Yeah. Nespresso. And she said, mama, you're supposed to clean it every three months. Oh my gosh. That doesn't seem that often. Oh no, no. I mean like use a cleaning solution, not like clean it, clean it, clean it. I know, but you know, some person's definition of cleaning is different from other person's definition of cleaning. And that presents itself in our favorite subject. Real estate. How does that relate? I'm not sure, but we'll get into it. I'm Julie Jones. And I'm David Vann with the Real Property St. Pete podcast. And RE MAX Metro. Yes. And it's exciting because we're back again for my favorite episode, which is the monthly statistics. Ba bang! The monthly statistics, that's right. And today we have the January statistics for 2024. So that's pretty cool. That comes out at the end of February, which was last week. And so now we have an update on what's happened in the month of January, which is, you know, it's already March, but these statistics are lagging behind because they have to assemble them and bring it out and all that stuff. So that takes a little bit of time, but I feel like you have to get to the end of the month. And then they need time. So it does take, it's, you know, from the first part of the month to the, when they come out a solid 45 days later, right. And in my opinion, what we're going to talk about today feels stale. I think that the market has changed for the better. In the month of February, and I'll just stay quiet, but it's all subjective. I mean, that's the thing is that you could be, everyone could be having a really great month and your listings aren't quite at the stage where they're going to sell. And, you know, so you may be on the edge of working with some buyers who are going to buy, we see different things. So it's always fun to look at the stats and see if it's what we're experiencing. And I, I feel like things are starting to heat up a little bit because I've had two buyers buy and I've had three listings go under contract and that's great. But the listings had been on the market for a while. I was going to say those listings were lingering a bit. They were, and they'd had. Price reductions. Also, we were either not getting showings when we get showings, we would not get very good offers. And we only had maybe one offer over about three or four months. And you lower the price a couple of times and the sellers get a little frustrated and the buyers coming in to look at the property are, I don't want to say they weren't qualified, but they're not appropriate buyers for the particular property. And that's concerning. And you know, we hope that. Realtors can, you know, profile their buyers to pick a correct house for them, right? Well, it makes you wonder if they're just like, whatever you want me to do, I'll do it because some people are not as busy as you are right now, David. Right. And it's, you know, you know, it's funny cause I was thinking today that one of the houses that I did get under contract this week, you know, there was a, They had a significant loss in the sale of the property. I hate to say that, but that's the case. And I was thinking about what could I have done differently? And is there anything I could do to help and be better? But I remember that I did nine open houses at that house. When you were very, that's a lot. I don't need to pass that by. I mean, we had exposure. We did two brokers opens. I had nine open houses and I'm like, Wow. I wonder if I've ever done nine open houses on a listing. You have. It's just been a while. I don't know. I don't know. I think you forgot about 2010, 11, 12 and 13 and 14. I don't know. I don't know. I think more than three, if I've ever done more than three open houses at one house, I don't know what to say, but nine is crazy. You did a great job with that property and it was very well exposed and I think you were very creative with it. Yeah, I really like the sellers. I mean, they are fantastic people and I really formed a, a strong bond with them and learning about their needs and how they were feeling and doing everything I could to help them feel better about what we were doing. And they were committed to selling the house and you know, what it took is not what we thought it was going to take. It took more and that's okay. I mean, we, I mean, there was a level of trust. I think they got built. During that time, you know, you struggle through something with someone for, you know, six months and you know, you're open to what they're saying and you're hearing what they're saying and you're doing everything you can to help them achieve their goal, which is selling their house. Anyway, that's what it was. And I was glad to have that relationship with them and for them to trust me and for us to do everything we could to sell. Great. So let's talk about the January 2024 statistics. Okay. The front page of the statistics include single family homes and townhomes and condos. So just as a couple of points of note, the new pending sales of both are down 8%. From January 23, compared with today, January 24, the pending inventory is down 11%, the new listings is up 29 percent and the entire inventory is up a whopping 55%. That includes condos. And we know there's a lot of condos for sale. We usually skip past that, but maybe we'll have to have a little tidbit about it. About the condos. Yes. So. Interestingly, the next page is the absorption rates for the single family and the absorption rates for the condos. And so let's remind people what the absorption rate is. The absorption rate is calculated by dividing the number of closed sales by the number of active listings. So the number of houses which have sold divided by the number of houses that are on the market. And so In this particular case, January of 24 is 26%. That means that about 25 percent of the houses sell that are on the market in one month. And it will take four months to sell all of the listings. If no new listings come on the market. That's a long time. It is a long time. It's quite an adjustment from the past three years of real estate market sales experience. So we've talked about how it maybe is helpful to buyers because they can actually spend a minute thinking about the home they've just viewed and whether they want to make an offer on it, what the costs are going to look like, all of those details. Instead of. Going home and writing an offer immediately and they can take a discount and they can take a discount They can actually negotiate the price or maybe some terms and sellers are willing to work with buyers on this I mean, I've I have a couple of different situations where there's a sale of buyer property contingency. You've had that right? Yes, it's been the first time in a few years where it's been successful. Yeah, people are being understanding about the fact that some people have stuff to sell. But when they have a place to go, they get a little more motivated about selling their house. But when you compare the absorption rate of single family homes at 26 percent to the absorption rate of condos, At 13 percent that's a big deal. 13 percent that means 13 percent of the condos sell and 87 percent of them don't sell each month. That's a lot, right? So anyway, that's a very slow market for condos, but we know there's a lot of new construction condos out there and that's changing things. I think it's impacting the higher market, but also the things that are impacting the middle market and even the low end market is the milestone inspection. And we've talked about that and what it is in some of our prior podcast episodes. So if you're not familiar, you know, take a listen and see what we have to say about that. Right. You know, As I was showing my listing at one the other day, we were looking out on Bayfront tower and you know a lot about Bayfront tower and you know, the 42 million assessment that they have in order to You know, bring it up to code or improve the integrity of the building. I'm on track for that, right? Well, so actually they haven't determined the assessment amount. It is going to be significant. It could be anywhere from 30 to 50 million dollars, but they don't have any estimates yet. It's just going to be a very significant assessment. They actually haven't had a milestone inspection completed yet. They did a structural inspection of the building and then kind of like a home inspection is done and then you can get a four point from that data that's similar to that. So they did a structural inspection and then that company is actually going to do the milestone and it's still the same company. Okay. So the summary of some of the statistics that are out for January, I'll just roll through them quickly is that the closed sales was up about four and a half percent, five 74 versus five 49, 20, 24 over 2023. The median price is up 14 percent to 455, 000 from 400, 000. That was the one that was most surprising to me. That the pricing was up and it's median price, not average. I guess that's true is that there's less properties available that are lower price that would drive the median up. So we have the median price. The average sale price is that up as well? It is. It's up 13%, 625, 000 versus 552, 000, which is, you know, the accumulation of all the properties sold in that sales volume number divided by the number of properties. So the median maybe is like more understandable. The average being up is. Um, less understandable, but I mean, that's more significant than I would have expected that number to be. Yeah. Well, the total dollar volume sold in January of 24 versus 23 is up about 56 million. So that's up 18 and a half percent. So the actual dollar volume is significantly higher. Now we've had much higher months of the year. But not in January. I think historically is what you're talking about. Indeed. I mean, we're talking about 300 million. I mean, that's not a big number for our market. I mean, we've seen 600 million in our market and January is just anemic. Well, in part of the reason is that's coming off of sales that would have happened in December. So just like our statistics coming out 45 days later, or, you know, in essence, from the beginning of the month, the sales are typically 30 to 45 day sales. So those are going to be reflective of pretty much Thanksgiving through. All of the holidays, right? It includes part of November, all of December creating sales in January and closings. And you know, I don't know that we had always noticed that, but we have over the last few months noticed that when you look back historically, the numbers in January and December for, for, for pending contracts are, they're tough. So not too great, but, you know, spring market's upon us. I mean, I don't know whether I'm on a leading edge here or not, but you are. You know, and, and so I, David's on a leading edge. I'm on a leading edge, and that's great. I'm not sad, I'm happy and. So are my clients. So that's great. And, uh, but you know, I mean, that that's the life of real estate. I mean, you're doing nothing and then you're doing everything. And that's just a cycle of sales in many, many areas. But we definitely have a cyclical market here where November, December, January is pretty slow. And then, you know, spring market, like most places, the spring market, our spring market, you know, starts February, March. Some people start April, May, June, North Carolina, your sister, Washington, DC, my brothers, you know, they see that spring market start a little later. Once the thaw out happens, right. And the sun comes out, they're like, Oh, well, let's buy some real estate, tulips and daffodils and things like that. Right, they're so lucky to have. So the median Percent of original list price received is 95 percent versus 94 percent the year before. So people are getting a little closer to the list price. But as we said, it's still 5 percent off as the average. Or the median of what they're getting there. So, I mean, that's discounts are being taken. Sellers are accepting them and the properties are on the market 35 days. So that's the median time to contract. So when something's on the market these days, you know, half of them are more than 35 days and half of them are less, but you know, it's not unusual. See 60 days on market. That's not unusual right now. Would you agree? It's not unusual. Yeah, a lot of my listings are gathering some days on market without showings with very very very slow showings Yes, most of those are the condos But yes Some of my single families that I wouldn't have expected to be so slow are slow right now Also mine have been too. I mean it's been you know Talking about so that's a conversation that we have been trending and talking about month after month and it seems You You know, my feeling about it is even stronger right now is when you get a buyer, you better try to make a deal with them if you can. Yeah. You said that if you can. Yeah. Last offer that I got on one of my listings, we just accepted. That's the one we've been talking about too. It's actually a different one, but yeah, let's do it. I mean, so I think that's good. It's a good number. So that's good too. So it depends on what the number is. I actually got an offer before that that was 250, 000 under the list price. So that one did not even get a response. So, uh, new pending sales down three and a half percent, new listings up 26%. So in January of 24, we put 1, 147 new homes on the market in January of 23, 912. That's a big difference. It's like 200, 280 additional it's a lot. So then the active inventory is up 31 and a half percent. So the full market of single family homes was 2, 329 at the end of January of 24, and it was 1, 771 at the end of January 23. So needless to say, the month's supply is. Three months and it's up 47 and a half percent from January of 23. That's a big imbalance sales to inventory. It is. I know you're experiencing some good success and activity right now, but I'm feeling those numbers. Yeah, but my listings have been on a long time. That's true. They've had a lot of price reductions and they had nine open houses. So, but anyway, it's, you know, it is what it is. I'm optimistic about the spring market. It's usually the other direction. Suspect and skeptical and cynical about the insurance situation that we're dealing with in Florida. True. I mean, it's, it's definitely coming up strong in the questions when a buyer's interested in a particular property. Yeah. It's very expensive. And if you're a cash buyer, a lot of them are really asking why. Why should I have insurance when it costs 25, 000 a year? Yikes. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's crazy. So that's the end of that part of our statistical discussion. I think that we wanted to talk a little bit more about something that we talked about in our sales meeting that had to do with the breakdown on these numbers. So we talked about it briefly in our prior episode, but the breakdown on these numbers. from Pinellas Realtor Organization, we'll call them out on this, is becoming a little irrelevant. So their breakdown is in categories of less than 50, 000, 50 to 100, 000, 100 to 150, 150 to 199. And those categories alone are, you know, they have 13 closed sales in a month, which is actually surprising that you can buy something under. Yeah. And each of those categories you talk about are single digit data and zero, one, one, zero sales under a hundred thousand, which isn't surprising, right? I mean, so it's single family. Yeah. What was our request? So it was your request, but yeah, to make these categories a little different because there's On the converse, the breakdown of numbers is between 600 and 1 million, and those can be very different buyer, a 600, 000 buyer, and a 850, 000 buyer. And so that has a hundred sales. I think we need to know a little bit more about that. And then over a million dollars has 72 sales last month for single family homes. But there's some pretty high value properties in our market and knowing, you know, things that even are over 5 million and knowing what that statistic looks like would be a helpful reference if you were a seller of one of those types of properties. So David asked the Pinellas Realtor Organization. President President David Bennett to break those numbers down. So hopefully we'll start seeing that in the reports and be able to report back to you a little more because, you know, it's an interesting driver of median price when you've got a few homes that are selling over 10 million. You got, I mean, when I look at new listings by initial listing price between 400, 000 and a million, there's only two categories, 400 to 600, 600 to a million. And within that, there are, there are 650 about listings that have come on the market. I mean, That's the biggest piece of our market broken down into just two categories between 400 and a million. I mean, we need to see more than that. And there's 200 properties over a million, one to two as a price point, two to three, two to four, five, whatever. I mean, you know, there's a lot of different breakdowns of these numbers that, you know, it would really not be nice to see what they are. I mean, giving us, This information below 200, 000 when there's a single digit of significant data is, I think, useless. But anyway, they'll fix it. They usually do. They do a fantastic job, but that's, I think that's our request on this stuff, don't you think? I do. I think that'd be really helpful. Yeah. You know, I said 10 million, but even 1 to 2 million, 1 to 3 million, you know, there is some significant inventory in our Hyper local market that's selling and be good to know about right? Right. I'd love to see what those numbers are So I think that's it for the single family homes. You know, we have talked a little bit about condos and townhomes We haven't gone into them as much now But we do know interesting facts January of 24 the month supply of inventory for townhomes and condos has crested five months So there's five months of inventory out there and the pending sales are down 20 percent to 700 and you know, the new pending sales are down 14 percent and we're seeing that 13 percent as a absorption rate and you know, that's not a good number. No, no, it's not. That's a lot of supply and not very many sales. Well, and you made a point when we were just chitchatting earlier about condos that are in flood zones, those have seen significant increases in their HOA fees for a number of reasons, including. The cost of flood insurance. And you know, in the, when you talked about milestone inspections, that's something that everybody's asking about, you know, the older condominiums are required to do that and, you know, they can be expensive. They've got some condos that have got huge fees. We've got some that have checked out well, but you know, it's just, it's just another hurdle to buy a property in Florida. Well, I think like, But that was a good recap of our numbers and we're hoping we can get these numbers out to you quickly next month so you know what's going on and can keep track of. The status of the market. Yeah. It'll be nice to see if I feel like there's more pending sales happening right now in over the last four to five weeks. Julie might not think that two closings this week. So I'll add to a few of them, but well, there you go. Not a lot else. I've worked with a couple of buyers that were from out of town, so that's good. And so that's been real exciting and they found great houses. I mean, some really, really great houses. And anyway, I get still St. Pete's a pretty affordable place to buy property. So anyway, I'm happy with what I'm seeing and we'll look to see if the next month's statistics bear that out. I'm excited to see it as well. Thank you for listening today. I'm Julie Jones and I'm David Vann with the Real Property St. Pete Podcast. And please subscribe below and listen for our next episodes.