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The last thing I like to look at each year for the previous year’s final numbers is the strength or weakness of the market in terms of sales price versus list price. Here I’ll be looking at the percentage of homes selling for asking price or better and how that metric has trended over time. The data I used for this chart has had any sales concessions deducted from the sales price and is for the ratio of last listed MLS price to sales price, IRES only data for Boulder County. Original listed price is not a downloadable field from IRES and there’s too much data to try and hand scrub through it all and find original listed prices, so I’m stuck using last MLS asking price.
Keep in mind that the charts and graphs below are summaries for the entire year and don’t show the dramatic shift we experienced throughout 2022. As you’d expect, we have moved off the highest levels for the percent of homes receiving asking price or better, down to an annual average of 55.36% for single family and 59.67% for attached homes. With this downward move, fewer single family homes are getting asking price or better offers than attached homes, making 2021 the one year since I tracked this metric where single family outperformed attached.
When I pull this over asking price data, I look at the sales price to asking price ratios and how those ratios change depending on how quickly the home goes under contract. As you would expect, the more quickly the home goes under contract, the more likely the sales price was at or over the asking price. The 2022 numbers do show the softening of the market, with only 52.33% of the single family homes going under contract in the first week and of those homes, just under 81% went for asking price or better. These two numbers are 8-10 percentage points lower than we saw in 2021. In 2021, we had such strength that I felt the need to add additional detail on the homes that sold for over 105% over asking. That detail is included below, but with our retreat from the hottest market frenzy, I’m not sure that detail remains warranted for the sales past the first week.
As per usual, I also take this same data and plot it in separate colors denoting the week in which the property went under contract. Last year I had expanded the detail beyond 105% over asking which I kept and which is likely no longer needed. I also keep the vertical scale on these charts constant year over year so they can easily be compared. This year, you can see that sales did not approach the top of the scale as they have in the past, which was due to a combination of much lower sales numbers and fewer sales in the first week. Also, last year, no matter which week on the market the property went under contract, the most common result was asking price or better. This year we can see that only occurred in weeks 1, 2 and 6. Homes that went under contract in weeks 3, 4 & 5 most commonly sold for a less than asking price, generally 97-98% of asking price. Slower market times for sure.
Now, let’s look at these same stats for attached homes. As in 2021, just a touch softer than the single family home data, but a strong year with just over half of the attached homes going under contract in the first week and of those homes, 82% selling for asking price or better. As in previous years, the strength over asking price didn’t extend as far above asking price as it did for single family homes. For 2022, as in the single family chart, I kept the more detailed info for prices over 105% over asking, but may pare that down in the future if we see less need for this data.
Here again is the plot of the above data. The blue spike in the 1st week being less dominant and not extending as far to the right as we saw in the 2021 chart. Unlike the single family chart, we continued to see the highest number of sales every week at asking price and the peaks are all lower than the 2021 chart due to lower sales volume.
The slower start to 2023 has me interested to see what these charts and metrics will look like in 2024. Will our current weakness (with some surprising exceptions) extend throughout the year or will rates drop and we’ll be strengthening throughout the year. Only time will tell. Stay warm!
