June Birmingham Market Update And Seasonality In Real Estate

Rob Drum · Posted on

Market Update

  • A continued trend of less listings, less sales, and higher prices.
  • Average sales price increased significantly, but not as much as the last two months.
  • Days on market and percentage of expired listings dropped, signaling continued competitiveness for available listings

When do the most homes sell?

Listings going under contract by week

It’s common knowledge that the real estate market, like the weather, heats up in the summer and cools off in the winter. Being an active participant in the market for the last two years, I can vouch for this generalization.

But I was curious. What do the numbers show? Is there more to be learned about the seasonal characteristics of the real estate market?

I gathered all sales in Jefferson County for 2017 and 2018. Then separated sales by which week of the year they went under contract. I think “date under contract” is a more accurate representation of buying intent than “sale date”. The above graph is a visual representation of what I found.

Key Observations

  • The last two weeks of December have extremely low activity. The first two weeks of January are also lagging. Things pick up in the 3rd week of January.
  • Activity builds slowly until the 21st week of the year (June). Then, it spikes for the Summer.
  • The peak of activity is in July and August. (Right now is prime time!)
  • Volume slowly declines through the Fall.
  • This is probably the most usable piece of information I uncovered in this study.
    • There was much more activity in the Fall than the Spring.
    • If you’re selling your house, Summer is best. But, Fall is actually second best.
    • Here’s a chart showing contract activity broken down by season.

How long will we be under contract?

Since I had the data available, I wanted to answer another question. What does the data say about the time from contract to closing?

  • From experience, I would say the median is a more accurate representation.
  • It’s likely a few outliers (like probate cases) dragged the average higher.
  • I think the middle 50% is a good representation. I’ve had some close faster, and a few close slower.
  • I believe lender standards have loosened and efficiency has risen. I would be willing to bet 2019 numbers show contract to close times a little faster than 2017 and 2018 data show.