Low Inventory Takes a Toll on Summit County Real Estate Sales

Summit County real estate sales fell sharply in March as buyers appeared to have been discouraged by low inventories. Transaction volume was flat with February at 140 sales but was done 21 percent from February 2017. Dollar volume fell even more, dropping 30 percent to $86.6 million. The March weakness put the year-to-date figures into the red with transactions down 2 percent and dollar volume off 8 percent. Buyers are still circulating but with such limited choices they just aren’t fining what the want.
Year-to-date average selling prices (ASPs) for single family homes also took a hit in the month falling 12.5 percent from a year ago to $1,060,888. That figure, however, is only slightly below the $1,087,893 for all of 2017. Conversely, multi-family ASPs rose 19.4 percent versus this time last year reaching $535,591. That is 13 percent ahead of the full year 2017 number.
The sales mix did not show and decisive trends other than the lack of sales over $2 million and lower sales in the $200,000-$500,000 range.
Although April did see some improvement, inventories remain relatively low. For the entire county there are only 136 single family homes actively on the market. That is down from 156 a year ago. Multi-family properties are doing modestly better with 237 units for sale, up from 233 at the end of April 2017. In total there are 373 properties for sale down 4.2 percent from what were already record lows a year ago. What is even more remarkable is that figure represents only slightly little more than 1 percent of all the properties in the county.