Things have heated up way more than you may have expected.
Fast Value: Buyer demand is way up. Listings that “look good, are priced right, and are marketed well” sell fast. We’re gearing up for another competitive first half of the year.
The new year always brings a hotter market.
We expected a hot start to the year.
But not quite this hot…
Here is your February 2025 Housing Market Update
New Listings
Almost 2,100 new listings hit the market last month. This is a great start to the year as well as very close to what we had expected. Lots of sellers were on the sidelines through the end of the year and waited to list in January.
Available Listings
Here is where we get some great news. We have 21% more available inventory compared to this time last year. We are expecting to see our available inventory return to normal levels. This will definitely take time, but this is a great start to the year.
Closed Sales
A bit higher than we saw in January of last year. This is good. Seeing more closed sales means that more people are moving. Even if it’s only a 5% increase, that is still going in the right direction.
Days on Market
We’ve hit a big jump here. 25 days on market is higher than we’ve seen since January of 2023. That was the slowest winter we’ve seen in a long time. It will be interesting to see if inventory can keep up with demand this year.
I have two totally different thoughts here…
1) Days on market will continue to increase as homes that were sitting (for a long time) will start to sell
or…
2) We could see this come back down to the 10 – 14 range because of the competitive market we’re seeing right now.
It depends if the listings that have been sitting will actually sell or if buyers will pick around them.
Prices
We’ve already seen a rebound in pricing. The year ended with 6% price appreciation, and prices right now are 11% over what they were this time last year. This is due to the amount of buyer demand we’ve seen flood the market.
The median home price in OC stands at $1.165m, a hair below the peak of $1.2m we saw in May & June of last year.
Interest Rates
Not a whole lot of change here. We’re still seeing interest rates hovering around the 7% range. We have heard a lot of talk about interest rates over the last year. Here is the truth. It’ll be another boring year for rates. We’ll likely see them get slightly lower throughout the year.
Summary
There has been a flood of buyer demand with the new year. Last week, for example, our team wrote 13 offers for our buyers.
Every single one was up against multiple offers.
We are very good at navigating multiple offers, which is great for our clients… But I’m sharing this to show how competitive it’s gotten.
A month ago, we saw buyers getting ridiculous deals. Now, we are starting to see bidding wars again. Not crazy ones like we’ve seen in the past, but when most homes are seeing multiple offers, it drives prices up.
I would expect to see more of the same throughout the first half of the year.
So, here is a quick offer for you…
If you want to learn how we save our clients tons when competing with several offers, go to OnyxHomes.com/buy
If you want to learn how we sell your home above market value without spending money, go to OnyxHomes.com/sell