Today I'm sharing the latest information about our Pierce County real estate market. The median sale price is $515,000. Though prices have plateaued in the last three months, that still represents a 16.5% increase in home values since August 2020. To give you some context for how huge that is, real estate historically appreciates by about 5% per year—we got almost three years of appreciation crammed into one! Many people have been concerned about the idea of being in a market bubble. I assure you that very few experts think that we’re in a bubble. The general consensus is that appreciation is slowing down and leveling off (rather than home values simply plummeting like back in 2007 and 2008), bringing us back to a more balanced market. Homes in Pierce County are selling on average for over 2.1% over their asking prices. Keep in mind that asking prices are just starting bids. Homes are also selling very quickly; five days is the median days on market in our county right now. Pending sales are the number of homes that have offers accepted on them but haven’t yet officially closed. The number of pending sales has increased by 5.6% since this same time last year. This shows that even though there isn’t as much inventory in the market, the number of sales has increased.
"With only 18 days of inventory, you can see how much of an extreme seller’s market we’re in."
At 3:20 in the video above, you can see a chart that compares the number of active listings (in red) to the number of sales (in green). The number of homes for sale is up 3% compared to a year ago, and the number of homes sold is up 9.6%. This is a good thing because we definitely need more inventory in the market. Despite the increase in inventory, now is still a great time to sell a home. Demand for homes is still high in comparison to the number of homes available for sale. When a market has less than six months of inventory, that means it’s a seller’s market. It’s in this kind of market that we see home prices continue to rise, as we’ve consistently seen for the past several years. Given that we only have 18 days of inventory, you can see how much of an extreme seller’s market we’re in. The good news for sellers is that you’re very well positioned to be able to sell your home and get top dollar. For buyers, we’ve seen that many are going through what’s called buyer fatigue. Multiple-offer situations are rampant, and many are getting beat out for the homes they want. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next several months, but we’ll keep an eye on it and keep you posted as to what we’re experiencing. If you have any questions or would like to have a deeper conversation about what’s going on in our market, feel free to reach out to us by phone or email. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
