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December 28, 2015December 28, 2015
Leonardo Patrizi/iStock
Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or Festivus, the holidays seem to really take over the month of December: With long lines everywhere, office parties, decorations, and random elf sightings, everything else practically grinds to a halt. It’s typically not the best time to find a new job, start a diet, or—especially—buy or sell a home.
Just as we’d expected, the residential real estate market cooled down a bit in the last month of 2015, with reduced demand and inventory in most major markets—though not as much of a slowdown as the same time last year, according to a preliminary analysis of the month’s data on realtor.com®.
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The median list price in December, $228,000, is down from November, although just by 1%. That’s actually an increase of 9% from December of last year.
Listing inventory is expected to trend down 7% for the month, compared with November. Homes are taking longer to sell as markets prepare for the new year, but they’re still moving faster than this time last year. The median age of inventory—the amount of time that homes sit on the market—is now 93 days, which is up 11% from November but still down 7% year over year.
Jonathan Smoke, chief economist of realtor.com, and his team carried out the data analysis and identified the top 20 medium-to-large markets where homes are moving fastest and interest (based on listing views on realtor.com) is highest. At the top of the list, for the second month in a row, is San Francisco, followed by its sister Bay Area city San Jose.
“While California closed out our latest ranking still firmly in control of the hottest markets, the Midwest and Florida are both seeing substantial improvement,” said Smoke. “Pent-up demand and robust economic growth combined with limited supply will keep California tight in 2016, but more markets will challenge them as demand improves elsewhere.”
A few markets are new to the hot list this month: Tampa, FL; Fort Wayne, IN; and Midland, TX.
These markets typically represent a greater metro area, since people might work in a city but reside in a nearby suburb. For example, San Francisco also includes Oakland and Hayward; San Jose includes Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.
On the whole, the hottest markets receive about 1.4 to 2.9 times the number of views per listing compared with the national average. Their homes move off market 29 to 51 days more quickly than the rest of the U.S., and they have also seen days on market drop by a combined average of 15% year over year.
The hot list
- San Francisco, CA
- San Jose, CA
- Vallejo, CA
- Dallas, TX
- Sacramento, CA
- San Diego, CA
- Denver, CO
- Santa Rosa, CA
- Yuba City, CA
- Stockton, CA
- Los Angeles, CA
- Oxnard, CA
- Nashville, TN
- Palm Bay, FL
- Modesto, CA
- Detroit, MI
- Boulder, CO
- Tampa, FL
- Fort Wayne, IN
- Midland, TX
Article source: http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/the-hottest-u-s-markets-in-december-2015/