U.S. home-sale prices were essentially unchanged in March, ticking down by 0.1 percent from a year ago, to a median of $295,100 across the metros Redfin tracks. Although this barely registers as a decline, it’s the first year-over-year price decrease on record since February of 2012, when the median home sale price bottomed out at $171,600.
Only nine of the 85 largest metro areas Redfin tracks saw a year-over-year decline in their median price, including a 13 percent drop in San Jose and a 1 percent dip in San Francisco. At the same time, these and other expensive West Coast markets, including Los Angeles, Orange County, and Seattle posted double-digit year-over-year declines in the number of homes sold while several large affordable markets on the East Coast saw big annual sales gains. As housing market activity shifted from more to less expensive places, the median price (which is the midpoint of all sales) shifted to reflect the homes that sold last month.
”Homebuyers have backed off in West Coast metros where home prices have risen far out of their budgets,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “The opposite is happening in more affordable metros where buyers are eager to buy now to take advantage of low mortgage rates. In California, where the tax burden is high, some people are finding they have to move out of state to afford to buy a home. As a result, home sales are down in metros throughout the state.”
Much like the national home price chart, the headline number that sales increased 2 percent masks a lot of variation among metro areas. The number of homes sold actually fell in 37 of the 85 largest metro areas that Redfin tracks. Meanwhile, 24 metro areas saw double-digit increases in home sales compared to a year earlier.
What’s important is where home sales fell versus where home sales increased. Compare the median prices of the 10 metro areas that experienced the biggest increases in home sales compared to last year with the 10 that saw the biggest decreases in sales:
*A previous version of this report listed Orlando, FL as 4th among metros with the biggest sales gains. While we look into a potential issue with our Orlando data, we’ve removed Orlando from this list and Greenville, SC, has been added to the end of the top 10 ranking. We’ve also removed Orlando data from the Price, Sales, Inventory and New Listings tables at the end of this post.
On average, the metro areas that saw the biggest declines in home sales were more than 2.5 times as expensive as the metro areas where sales surged. The cheapest of the 10 metro areas where sales declined (Fresno, $275,000) was still more expensive than eight of the top 10 metros where sales surged.
“Salt Lake City and Las Vegas experienced rapid home price growth in 2017 and 2018,” explained Fairweather. “Even though these metros are still affordable to Californians, home sales are likely down because it has become harder for locals to afford to buy homes.”
The number of homes for sale at the end of the month was up 3.6 percent from a year earlier in March. The number of homes newly listed for sale fell 2.8 percent from March 2018.
Of the 85 largest metro areas Redfin tracks, 46 saw an increase in the number of homes for sale compared to a year earlier, with the largest gains coming yet again in San Jose (+104.3%) and Seattle (+82.9%). The metro areas with the biggest declines in homes for sale were Albuquerque (-36.4%) and New Orleans (-34.4%).
Home-selling speeds were largely unchanged from a year earlier nationally, increasing just one day to a median of 49 days on market. Again though, there was significant variation among metro areas, with 14 metro areas speeding up by 10 days or more from a year earlier and 15 metro areas slowing down by 10 days or more.
Many of the markets slowing down the most were clustered on the West Coast, such as Orange County (+18 days), San Diego (+16 days), Los Angeles, (+15 days), Portland, ORegon (+14 days), San Jose (+13 days) and Seattle (+12 days). On the flip side, the markets speeding up the most were mostly inexpensive metro areas on the East Coast or in the South or Midwest, such as New Orleans (-64 days), Knoxville, Tennessee (-48 days), Philadelphia (-29 days), Pittsburgh (-19 days), Atlanta (-16 days) and Indianapolis (-13 days).
In March, 20.0 percent of homes sold above the list price, down from 24.5 percent in March 2018. Meanwhile 22.5 percent of homes on the market in March had a price drop, up from March 2018’s share of 20.2 percent.
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Redfin Estimate
Below are market-by-market breakdowns for prices, inventory, new listings and sales for markets with populations of 750 thousand or more. For downloadable data on all of the markets Redfin tracks, visit the Redfin Data Center.
