Market UpdatesTrends May 27, 2020

Current Numbers that Matter – Week 10

Staying Put a Little Longer

This week, officials announced that the closure for non-essential travel over the border crossing to Canada has been extended until the end of June. So, we will have to wait a little longer for any fun rendezvous up north. I am curious to pay attention to how many of our Canadian buyers and sellers are unable to participate in our market right now as well. Also new this week, Skagit County Community College is providing drive-thru testing for COVID-19.

BACK TO THE DATA

Comparing this last week to the same week last year, we are again just under half the amount of New Listings for Whatcom County.  The market continues to fluctuate normally week to week- the numbers for both years went down since my update last week; reported last week was 137 in 2019, and 65 in 2020.

UNDER CONTRACT

Below is an accounting of all of the active listings on the market in our three major markets along with all of the sales that went under contract from 5/9 to 5/15/20 (pulled around Noon PST) and the percentage relationship between those numbers.

The biggest changes here are that in Bellingham, the homes under contract DOUBLED (BIG WEEK BELLINGHAM!!!), and in Lynden, only 1 house went under contract in the last week.

ADOM

The second chart represents the Average Days on Market (ADOM) for the homes that are currently active and that went under contract between 5/9/20 and 5/15/20. “Days on Market” is how long the home was active on the market before the seller accepted an offer.

Actives in all 3 areas continue to stay at a pretty steady DOM number over the weeks. As in a normal market there’s some fluctuation week-to-week in the DOM for the under contract sales.

% PRICE DIFFERENCE

The last set of data below is the average prices of the active listings and the average prices of the homes that went under contract last week. What we are mostly paying attention to here is how the % difference is changing from week to week to see how COVID-19 might be affecting the offer price that homes receive.

WOW= that 1 house that went under contract in Lynden this last week brought the average down, and the % difference up substantially!