November 2024 Hi Desert Real Estate Market Update

The National Association of Realtors is about to disclose that 2024 will have the lowest real estate sales nationally since 1995! Read that again. The lowest sales in almost 30 years! Regardless of the reason, we all must agree the market is broken and needs to be restarted. How? My first guess is to make housing more affordable again with better interest rates. Like all things in life, home prices have grown. We can’t fix that. We CAN fix the cost to maintain a mortgage. What if FHA, VA, and USDA were all funded at prime instead of the T-bills. What if the Feds gave all citizens the ability to have one of the above type loans. Only one. If you need it again, you must pay off the old prior to the new. No investors. Just homeowners allowed to borrow at the lowest rate available. Food for thought. Don’t even start on the high cost of insurance now! All of this is keeping home buyers away.

At one-point last month we had over 800 active listings in our local market. Last month we sold 86 homes. This is just short of a ten-month inventory. In other words, if no new homes hit the market, it would take 10 months to sell the current inventory. Our industry considers a balanced market at six months. Locally it is closer to four months. It is clearly a buyers’ market, and the surprising thing is no one seems to be telling the sellers. If we use an average sale of $250 per square foot, then currently over 543 (69%) of our active listings are listed above average!  Even if I stretch the average number out to $300 per square foot, over 407 (almost half 52%) of our current listings are listed above average. This is hindering our market along with the high interest rates along with no local jobs that can afford housing along with the collapse of the short-term rental market along with…. You get the picture.

Other numbers of note-

Over 81% of homes sold were under $400,000 but only 399 (50%) are listed below this number.

No houses sold over $750,000. Actually, two sold at $705,000. A first for me.

All three of our major communities had over 200 homes for sale. A first.

Vacant land sales are horrible. We have almost 1,300 parcels of vacant land for sale, but we only sold 22 in October!

If you are thinking about selling, thinking about buying, or just have questions about how to be successful in today’s market, contact me. We can find a winning solution to your real estate needs.

Sincerely,

Bob Armstrong
(760) 221-2999
DRE #01275801
GREEN Real Estate Group