Weekly Wrap Up...The Q We've All Been Wondering...When is this Going to Stop‪?‬ Selling the Rock

AND WE'RE BACK! David Kurt here on the mic to give you the Weekly Wrap Up!

I’ve got the Alice Cooper song ‘Schools Out’ being sung over and over in my head. Today is the last day of online school for my kids, and giving me a nice break away from the craziness of trying to be a full-time teacher in addition to parent, business owner, and Realtor®. I got a poll from the Rainbow school board this week and they were asking questions about what I would prefer when it comes to a possible plan for next year, would I like to see alternate days for students or alternate weeks (based on reducing the number of students in a classroom); and it sunk in we are in this for the long haul.

With the ‘new normal’ (I hate that term); continuing in Sudbury; and more businesses opening up as we officially welcome in Summer, things just keep getting hotter and hotter with the local real estate marketplace.

This week we saw 63 sales with an additional 30 conditional/pending deals. Sales + Conditional Sales this week = 93 Deals. It was just a few weeks ago that we were shocked to see this number in the 60s and 70s; and this week we almost hit 100! That alone is pretty insane, but believable when I look back at how busy things have been in the last 7 days. The bigger take away from this number is that there were only 70 new listings replacing the 93 deals. That's the biggest reduction in the available product we’ve seen in months; a sign that things aren’t going to get better for buyers any time soon.

The percentage of multiple offers may have dropped, but it's the value of the sales that are going over list price that is the bigger shocker here. There was one listing that was priced at 210 that sold for over 56k above the asking price, with no conditions! And with every new sale, we establish a new baseline for comparable sales and future listings. 

The crazy activity in the marketplace has a lot to do with buyers having FOMO (fear of missing out). Having been outbid on a few offers they become extra aggressive with their next bidding war. 

We’ve had chats with our team about listing strategy, and I’ve seen a ton of complaints online that ‘Realtors® are the cause of this mass increase in prices’.  When we list a house we do try to price it towards the upper end of what the recent sales show. I have heard on a few occasions that there are Realtors who are pricing homes under value purposely to encourage more activity and bidding wars. This is extremely frustrating for buyers! Homes that they are seeing in their price range are misleading and may sell significantly higher than their list price. A good Realtor and educated buyer should be able to estimate actual selling price (or range) when we see these under-priced listings, but realize that if this trend continues, there will be many frustrated buyers out there.

When is this going to stop? I’ve given a lot of thought about this and chatted about it in past weeks posts as well. Typically we see school end and families start to head to camp, or on vacations; although camp trips will continue, vacations will be on hold for the immediate future. This means that we won’t see the drop in buyers who shift their focus away from buying as they are busy with their summer plans. The number to continue to monitor will be Sales+Pending Sales versus New Listings. When things start to shift to more product and fewer offers, that's when the market will slow down, but I don’t know what will cause that in the near future.

If you're wondering how the market affects your situation as a buyer or seller, Lake City Realty would be happy to have a conversation with you! 

Hope you are enjoying the official start to summer. Sudbury Summers are the absolute best, we have the lakes, trails and beautiful outdoors to take advantage of; get outside and enjoy it!