Clearly buyers now have a lot more enthusiasm than they did in December. This is bringing down the counts of active listings (excluding UCB and CCBS). This is very unusual for January, a month in which we expect to see lots of new listings. Indeed new listings are up from a weekly rate of less than 700 in late December to over 2,000 a week at the end of January. Despite the huge increase in new listings, overall supply is falling because so many are going under contract. We also have fewer new listings than we did last year when we saw over 2,250 per week.
An interest rate of around 6% would have been considered horrendous this time last year, but now it seems quite reasonable compared with rates over 7% that we witnessed in October and early November. It is also becoming commonplace for sellers to assist buyers in buying down their interest rate still further. Together with improving stability and confidence, this has helped rebuild demand which has recovered more in the last 4 weeks than we anticipated. This trend is building on the positive signs we reported during the second half of December.
Data as of 2-03-23 courtesy of The Cromford Report®