Tight inventories and rising list prices enticed more homeowners to put their homes up for sale as total listings jumped nearly six percent from April to May according to the latest housing data of 146 metro areas released by Realtor.com.
The total number of existing homes for sale increased 5.82 percent from April to May with 1,852,740 single-family homes, condos, townhomes, and co-ops listed for sale during the month. Compared to a year ago, there were still 10.11 percent fewer homes available for purchase during the month.
The median list price for an existing home in May was $199,000, up 2.10 percent from April and up 4.79 percent from May of last year.
Year-over-year, four of the top five area’s with the most improved list prices were located in California led by a 42.45 percent increase in the Sacramento area followed by a 38.27 percent gain in Oakland. Detroit (+31.73) was the lone non-California city to make the top five with San Jose (+30.58%) and the Los Angeles-Long Beach area (+27.80%) taking the last two spots. California cities held seven of the top ten spots where listing prices have increased year-over-year with Phoenix and Reno being the other two non-California cities to break the top ten.
The area’s suffering the greatest decline in median list prices were Springfield, IL (-8.89%), Little Rock-North Little Rock, AR (-5.47%), Fort Wayne, IN (-5.02%), South Bend, IN (-4.71%) and Peoria-Pekin, IL (-4.71%).
List prices are not necessarily indicative of selling prices, but may signal market sentiment by sellers. All together, one hundred of the areas saw an increase in list prices, while ten areas were unchanged from the previous year.
The average number of days that an existing home spent on the market fell to 79 in May from 81 in April and was down from 91 days in May of last year. Only 15 out of the 146 metropolitan areas required 100 or more days to sell a home.
Residents selling their homes in the southern region of South Carolina continued to wait the longest to sell their homes, averaging 144 days on the market. Residents in Oakland had the shortest wait for the 20th consecutive month, averaging 16 days on the market.
Tags: housing inventory, listed homes, home prices, median sales price, average list price
Source:
Realtor.com
Reported by Chris Moore